When the Web Clipper service is enabled, Joplin exposes a [REST API](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer) which allows third-party applications to access Joplin's data and to create, modify or delete notes, notebooks, resources or tags.
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:
In the documentation below, the token will not be specified every time however you will need to include it.
# Using the API
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:
* **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.
# About the property types
* Text is UTF-8.
* All date/time are Unix timestamps in milliseconds.
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 }`
created_time | int | When the resource was created.
updated_time | int | When the resource was last updated.
user_created_time | int | When the resource was created. It may differ from created_time as it can be manually set by the user.
user_updated_time | int | When the resource was last updated. It may differ from updated_time as it can be manually set by the user.
file_extension | text |
encryption_cipher_text | text |
encryption_applied | int |
encryption_blob_encrypted | int |
## GET /resources
Gets all resources
## GET /resources/:id
Gets resource with ID :id
## POST /resources
Creates a new resource
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:
