This API is available when the clipper server is running. It provides access to the notes, notebooks, tags and other Joplin object via a REST API. Plugins can also access this API even when the clipper server is not running.
In order to use it, you'll first need to find on which port the service is running. To do so, open the Web Clipper Options in Joplin and if the service is running it should tell you on which port. Normally it runs on port **41184**. If you want to find it programmatically, you may follow this kind of algorithm:
```javascript
let port = null;
for (let portToTest = 41184; portToTest <= 41194; portToTest++) {
const result = pingPort(portToTest); // Call GET /ping
if (result == 'JoplinClipperServer') {
port = portToTest; // Found the port
break;
}
}
```
# Authorisation
To prevent unauthorised applications from accessing the API, the calls must be authentified. To do so, you must provide a token as a query parameter for each API call. You can get this token from the Joplin desktop application, on the Web Clipper Options screen.
This would be an example of valid cURL call using a token:
All the calls, unless noted otherwise, receives and send **JSON data**. For example to create a new note:
curl --data '{ "title": "My note", "body": "Some note in **Markdown**"}' http://localhost:41184/notes
In the documentation below, the calls may include special parameters such as :id or :note_id. You would replace this with the item ID or note ID.
For example, for the endpoint `DELETE /tags/:id/notes/:note_id`, to remove the tag with ID "ABCD1234" from the note with ID "EFGH789", you would run for example:
The four verbs supported by the API are the following ones:
* **GET**: To retrieve items (notes, notebooks, etc.).
* **POST**: To create new items. In general most item properties are optional. If you omit any, a default value will be used.
* **PUT**: To update an item. Note in a REST API, traditionally PUT is used to completely replace an item, however in this API it will only replace the properties that are provided. For example if you PUT {"title": "my new title"}, only the "title" property will be changed. The other properties will be left untouched (they won't be cleared nor changed).
* **DELETE**: To delete items.
# Filtering data
You can change the fields that will be returned by the API using the `fields=` query parameter, which takes a list of comma separated fields. For example, to get the longitude and latitude of a note, use this:
You can specify how the results should be sorted using the `order_by` and `order_dir` query parameters, and which page to retrieve using the `page` parameter (starts at and defaults to 1). You can specify the number of items to be returned using the `limit` parameter (the maximum being 100 items).
In case of an error, an HTTP status code >= 400 will be returned along with a JSON object that provides more info about the error. The JSON object is in the format `{ "error": "description of error" }`.
# About the property types
* Text is UTF-8.
* All date/time are Unix timestamps in milliseconds.
* Booleans are integer values 0 or 1.
# Testing if the service is available
Call **GET /ping** to check if the service is available. It should return "JoplinClipperServer" if it works.
Call **GET /search?query=YOUR_QUERY** to search for notes. This end-point supports the `field` parameter which is recommended to use so that you only get the data that you need. The query syntax is as described in the main documentation: https://joplinapp.org/help/#searching
To retrieve non-notes items, such as notebooks or tags, add a `type` parameter and set it to the required [item type name](#item-type-id). In that case, full text search will not be used - instead it will be a simple case-insensitive search. You can also use `*` as a wildcard. This is convenient for example to retrieve notebooks or tags by title.
| base_url | text | If `body_html` is provided and contains relative URLs, provide the `base_url` parameter too so that all the URLs can be converted to absolute ones. The base URL is basically where the HTML was fetched from, minus the query (everything after the '?'). For example if the original page was `https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=%5Bjava%5D+test`, the base URL is `https://stackoverflow.com/search`. |
| image_data_url | text | An image to attach to the note, in [Data URL](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Basics_of_HTTP/Data_URIs) format. |
| crop_rect | text | If an image is provided, you can also specify an optional rectangle that will be used to crop the image. In format `{ x: x, y: y, width: width, height: height }` |
When a new note is created, it is automatically assigned a new unique ID so **normally you do not need to set the ID**. However, if for some reason you want to set it, you can supply it as the `id` property. It needs to be a **32 characters long string** in hexadecimal. **Make sure it is unique**, for example by generating it using whatever GUID function is available in your programming language.
Creating a new resource is special because you also need to upload the file. Unlike other API calls, this one must have the "multipart/form-data" Content-Type. The file data must be passed to the "data" form field, and the other properties to the "props" form field. An example of a valid call with cURL would be:
This end point can be used to retrieve the latest note changes. Currently only note changes are tracked.
## Properties
| Name | Type | Description |
| ----- | ----- | ----- |
| id | int | |
| item_type | int | The item type (see table above for the list of item types) |
| item_id | text | The item ID |
| type | int | The type of change - either 1 (created), 2 (updated) or 3 (deleted) |
| created_time | int | When the event was generated |
| source | int | Unused |
| before_change_item | text | Unused |
## GET /events
Returns a paginated list of recent events. A `cursor` property should be provided, which tells from what point in time the events should be returned. The API will return a `cursor` property, to tell from where to resume retrieving events, as well as an `has_more` (tells if more changes can be retrieved) and `items` property, which will contain the list of events. Events are kept for up to 90 days.
If no `cursor` property is provided, the API will respond with the latest change ID. That can be used to retrieve future events later on.
