API documentation

About API documentation

This page is the Mastodon documentation's introduction to the Mastodon REST API. It explains how the API exposes Mastodon data over HTTP with JSON payloads, which HTTP methods endpoints accept, and how clients should read responses. It is written as a primer for developers rather than a reference for individual endpoints.

The page covers sending parameters as query strings, form data or JSON, encoding arrays, nested hashes and booleans, and uploading files with multipart/form-data. It also lists HTTP status codes clients may encounter, including 200, client errors such as 401, 404, 410, 422 and 429, and server errors such as 503. Examples use the cURL command-line utility.

Key features

• Explains REST API access to Mastodon data over HTTP with JSON
• Covers GET, POST, PUT/PATCH and DELETE methods on endpoints
• Describes parameters as query strings, form data or JSON
• Documents bracket notation for arrays and nested hash parameters
• Notes multipart/form-data encoding for file uploads
• Lists expected HTTP response codes for client and server errors

API documentation at a glance