

Here is a program that uses the Web API’s search endpoint to retrieve cover art: Let’s take a look at a simple program that uses the Web API. JSON is a common, language-independent format and code for parsing JSON data is readily available for a large variety of programming languages. The API is really designed to be accessed programmatically and the fact that it returns data in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format is very helpful in this regard. Retrieving data in your browser like this is not particularly useful unless you just want to check that the API is working. There is a huge amount of data available, and the best part is that it’s free to access. You can make similar calls through the Web API to retrieve information from the Spotify catalog about artists, tracks and playlists.

The Web API uses the same HTTP protocol that’s used by every internet browser. Basically it is an interface that programs can use to retrieve and manage Spotify data over the internet. Our API is what is commonly known as a RESTful API. In this post, I’d like to take you on a brief tour of the API and show you some of the programs that have already been developed with it. Today the API has 40 distinct endpoints and more are being added all the time. Six months ago, when we launched our Web API, we provided twelve endpoints through which developers could retrieve Spotify catalog data.
