API documentation

How to use our API to search for barcodes

REST API explanation

API means "Application Programming Interface". It is a set of rules that lets programs talk to each other, exposing data and functionality across the internet in a consistent format.

REST stands for "Representational State Transfer". This is an architectural pattern that describes how distributed systems can expose a consistent interface. When people use the term ‘REST API,’ they are generally referring to an API accessed via HTTP protocol at a predefined set of URLs.

These URLs represent various resources - any information or content accessed at that location, which can be returned as JSON, HTML, audio files, or images. Often, resources have one or more methods that can be performed on them over HTTP, like GET, POST, PUT and DELETE.

Barcode.monster provides some REST APIs for looking up barcode information.

Getting barcode information

Information is provided both in HTML and in JSON format. The HTML format you probably know how to acces: you can search for a barcode inserting the code after /code url path.

To use our API and get a JSON formatted content, you can call /api/1234567890123 where 1234567890123 is the code you are looking for. An example of a respose is shown here.

        
    {
        code: "1234567890123",
        class: "EAN13",
        company: "ACME American Company Making Everything",
        description: "Super Speed Vitamins",
        image_url: "https://acme.com/catalog/supers.jpg",
        size: "50 capsules",
        status: "active"
    }
    
Advertising