Developers Tools and APIs

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Developers Overview: Integrating with Scribd


Scribd's API makes it easy to add Scribd's reader to your own website, allowing your users to view documents without leaving your site. Tens of thousands of companies are using Scribd's API to display many millions of documents using our terrific Flash reader technology. Using the API, you can use Scribd as a back-end for an application that needs to process documents, without needing to write a document processing system yourself.

Also see the API Presentation for an overview.

Ways to Use Scribd's API

There are three main use cases for the Scribd API.

Use the Scribd Reader on your own site

Scribd's API allows you to use the Scribd Reader to embed documents on your own site, even if those documents are not available at Scribd.com. To use the Scribd API this way, you'll upload your documents to our server in "private" mode, and then use the Javascript API to display them.

Integrate Scribd's content into your site

Scribd hosts tens of millions of public documents - one of the largest collections on the internet. The Scribd API allows you to search, browse and embed all those documents on your own site. If your site is a mobile/ereader product, be sure to check out our mobile API product.

Bulk upload

Have a lot of documents that you'd like to publish on Scribd? We'd love to have them, and the Scribd API makes it easy to do. Depending on the content types, we may be able to help you with the upload process - contact our business development team for more information.

API Design

The Scribd API is a REST-based API with methods for uploading, converting, viewing, deleting, and searching documents.

All API requests are made by sending a request to the following address:

http://api.scribd.com/api

An example API request might look like:

http://api.scribd.com/api?method=docs.getList&api_key=758buxouy289mh4mhh1uf

All API requests must include the following 2 parameters: api_key and method.

Most requests can be simple HTTP GET's. This has the nice effect that you can test your API calls by just typing your request URL into your browser's address bar. However, the docs.upload method must be an HTTP Multi-Part POST because it sends a file. To embed documents, look at the Javascript API

There are client libraries for the API in a number of languages. Check out the tutorials to see some simple example programs.