Learn the Basics of the Formstack API (Version 1)
This Version of the API is Deprecated
Deprecated
This version of our API is deprecated. We highly suggest you use our V2 API which is REST based.
There are no current plans to shut down this version of the API, but if that changes in the future, we'll update this page with a window to allow developers to upgrade to V2.
Request Formats
The Formstack API accepts requests via HTTP GET query parameters, as well as HTTP POST data. HTTP POST is required for any requests including content uploads.
Response Formats
The Formstack API offers three response types: XML (default), JSON, and PHP (the output of running PHP's serialize() method. To choose a response format, just pass the xml, json, or php as the value for the type parameter.
Authentication
You can create a V1 API key from the API Key page inside of Formstack. Once a key is created, you can determine which Formstack User the key is associated with. The associated User determines the level of access you will have as an API consumer.
You pass along the URL as standard parameter:
https://www.formstack.com/api/v1/forms?api_key=[[app:api_key]]
API Wrapper
We have PHP, ASP.NET, and Python API wrapper libraries available in GitHub.
Permissions
Permissions are defined as
- Info - can get the form name, some settings, and statistics such as the number of submissions and views for that form
- Data - can search and view submission data for a form
- Submit - can submit new entries to a form, but not view or edit existing entries
- Write - can view, edit, and create submissions for a form
| Info | Data | Submit | Write | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forms | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Form | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Data | N | Y | N | Y |
| Submissions | N | Y | N | Y |
| Submit | N | N | Y | Y |
| Edit | N | N | N | Y |
| Delete | N | N | N | Y |