AddThis offers a number of different APIs and SDKs, each with a specific purpose. Some of these APIs are client-side, and control how the AddThis sharing tools behave on your page. Others are server-side APIs that you can use for different types of integration between your site and the AddThis backend platform.
Here is a quick overview of the various resources available, and how you might use them:
- Client API: The AddThis Client API is the client-side JavaScript API that you use to add AddThis sharing tools (button, menu, or toolbox) to your web page. When you Get the Code in the AddThis web interface, you are getting code that uses this API. The Client API has a large number of features that let you customize the appearance and behavior of the tools in your page.
- Welcome Bar API: The Welcome Bar appears at the top of the page offering your users a simple call to action, such as to share this page or to link to a specific section of your site. You can display custom messages based on referrer (a blog linking to you, for instance) or to automatically offer visitors their preferred sharing method. In fact, thanks to the AddThis data API, you can tailor the Welcome Bar very specifically to your visitors using criteria as diverse as their geolocation, preferred social networks, and more.
- Trending Content Box API: The Trending content box uses your analytics to feature top content on your site to keep visitors engaged and drive more pageviews.
- Content Feeds: Use our Content Feeds to access RSS and JSON feeds of your top content. Incorporating these feeds into your pages and widgets will surface your best content to users and invite them to click on interesting parts of your site.
- Sharing Endpoints: The AddThis Sharing Endpoints are a set of simple URL endpoints you can use to initiate sharing to any web site supported by the AddThis platform. Using this API, you can leverage AddThis for sharing, but build your own client side user interface. You can even just link to the API calls directly from your page, which saves you the trouble of having to worry about the URLs for every single destination.
- Analytics API: The AddThis Analytics API is a web-service you can use to access the analytics data about sharing taking place on your site, without using the AddThis analytics interface. You can use this to build your own reports, for example.
- Services API: The Services API provides a list of our supported sharing services, along with their icons and service metadata in JSON, JSONP and XML formats.
- Flash support: If you are a Flash developer, you can install AddThis AS3 code into Flash website and widget components that utilizes a set of URL sharing endpoints. Alternatively, you can use a standard AddThis button or menu to share Flash content embedded in your pages by tagging those pages with Facebook-style meta tags.
- AddThis for iOS: If you develop for iOS, you can build AddThis sharing into your mobile apps using our SDK. We've included a Quickstart Guide to download and install the library, and complete documentation.
- AddThis for Android: If you develop for Android, you can build AddThis sharing inro your mobile apps using our SDK. We've include a Quickstart Guide to download and install the library, and complete.
Which One Do I Use?
Choose the API appropriate for your task.
| If you want to... | Then you should... |
|---|---|
| Change the way the AddThis menu looks or acts | Use the Client API to change the behavior of the menu. Most of the common customization options are described in Customizing AddThis. |
| Get direct access to your analytics data | If you want direct access to the data you see in the analytics interface on AddThis.com in order to do your own analysis or build your own reports, use the Analytics API. |
| Add simple sharing buttons to your page, instead of or alongside the full menu | AddThis Toolbox is an HTML-based method for adding simple sharing buttons to your page using the Client API, and will let you use code that looks quite a bit like the default code provided in the console. If you want to avoid using the AddThis client side tools altogether, you can just link to the Sharing Endpoints directly. |
| Roll your own sharing buttons, but still use the AddThis backend | The Sharing Endpoints are publicly available URLs that you can pop up or link to directly, saving you the trouble of figuring out or remembering the URLs for all of the different destinations but still being as simple as if you had linked to those directly. |