Making requests to the Typekit API

The Typekit API consists of a number of endpoints. Each endpoint represents a resource (a kit, a font family etc) that can be manipulated. You access the Typekit API by making HTTP requests to these endpoints.

For example, to get information about one of the kits hosted by Typekit in JSON format, you can make a GET request to https://typekit.com/api/v1/json/kits/qba6sms/published like so:

$ curl -s https://typekit.com/api/v1/json/kits/qba6sms/published | jsonpretty
{
  "kit": {
    "id": "qba6sms",
    "families": [
      {
        "id": 'ykqk',
        "name": "Bello Pro",
        "css_names": [
          "bello-pro-1",
          "bello-pro-2"
        ],
        "css_stack": "\"bello-pro-1\",\"bello-pro-2\",sans-serif",
        "variations": [
          "n4"
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

URLs

Throughout the API documentation we use rails-style URL descriptions. For example, the URL https://typekit.com/api/v1/json/kits/qba6sms/published contains several components:

• https://typekit.com/api/v1/ is the root URL of this version of the Typekit API. Future releases of the API may be hosted at a different URL.
• json is the requested format for responses.
• kits/qba6sms/published is the specific endpoint requested, in this case the published version of kit "qba6sms".

This could be rewritten as https://typekit.com/api/v1/:format/kits/:kit/published, where :format and :kit are parameters we want to pass to the API.

In most cases we'll also ignore the API root and format, giving us kits/:kit/published.

HTTP Methods

The HTTP method used is significant:

• GET requests are used to read information from the API
• POST requests are used to manipulate objects
• DELETE requests are used to remove objects

In some cases you may not be able to issue a DELETE request. In this scenario you can send a POST request with a _method=DELETE parameter and the API will treat it as a DELETE request.

Parameters

Many API endpoints allow you to pass extra information about your request. The parameters page explains how to format these parameters.