Backend API

Baserow is divided into two components, the backend and the web-frontend, which talk to each other via a REST API. This page contains some documentation about those endpoints and how to use them. These endpoints should never be used to show data on your own website because that would mean you have to expose your credentials or JWT token. They should only be used the make changes in your data. You can publicly expose your data in a safe way by creating a database token token, set the permissions and follow the automatically generated api docs at https://baserow.io/api-docs.

In the future there are going to be features that enable you to expose your data publicly in a safe way.

OpenAPI spec

There is a full specification of the API available here https://api.baserow.io/api/redoc/. You will find documentation and some examples for each endpoint. The OpenAPI spec can also be downloaded in JSON format here https://api.baserow.io/api/schema.json.

Authentication

In order to use most of the endpoints you need an authorization token and in order to get one you need an account. Below you will find a small example on how to create an account.

POST /api/user/
Host: api.baserow.io
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "name": "Bram",
  "email": "bram@localhost.com",
  "password": "your_password"
}

or

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -i https://api.baserow.io/api/user/ --data '{
  "name": "Bram",
  "email": "bram@localhost.com",
  "password": "your_password"
}'

The server should respond with a 200 status code which means your account has been created. The provided email address will be your username. More information about this endpoint can be found in the API spec at https://api.baserow.io/api/redoc/#operation/create_user.

Now that you have created an account, you need a JWT token to authorize each following request. This can be requested using the following example.

POST /api/user/token-auth/
Host: api.baserow.io
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "username": "bram@localhost.com",
  "password": "your_password"
}

or

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -i https://api.baserow.io/api/user/token-auth/ --data '{
  "username": "bram@localhost.com",
  "password": "your_password"
}'

If you inspect the JSON response you will notice a key named ‘token’. The value is the token that you need for all the other requests. More information about this endpoint can be found in the API spec at https://api.baserow.io/api/redoc/#operation/token_auth. You can simply provide an Authorization header containing JWT {TOKEN} to authorize. The token will be valid for 60 minutes and can be refreshed before that time using the https://api.baserow.io/api/redoc/#operation/token_refresh endpoint.

The following example will list all the workspaces that belong to your account. When you just have created an account an example workspace has been created automatically. More information about this endpoint can be found in the API spec at https://api.baserow.io/api/redoc/#operation/list_workspaces.

GET /api/workspaces/
Host: api.baserow.io
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: JWT {YOUR_TOKEN}

or

curl -X GET -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'Authorization: JWT {YOUR_TOKEN}' -i 'https://api.baserow.io/api/workspaces/'

Common issues

415 Unsupported Media Type

If you ever get the error “Unsupported media type”, you most likely need to add the following HTTP header to your request. This is so that the server knows your body is in JSON format.

Content-Type: application/json
Secure File Serving WebSocket API