Introducing the new API!

Hello!

After a fair bit of work, I'm pleased to announce we've put up a simple API. For those who don't know, an API is an "Application Programming Interface" that can be used by one program to access data in another program, in this case, Vimeo.

You can access all kinds of data from Vimeo in a variety of formats. Currently we offer JSON, XML and PHP feeds. We plan to expand the API in the future, but let me know if you really want something else.

I've added some documentation here:
vimeo.com/api

Also, to show off what it can do, I created a Dashboard Widget for OS X. So, if you have a Tiger or later, download it and give it a spin:
vimeo.com/VimeoDash.wdgt.zip

To install it, unzip it and double click on the widget.

If you have any questions, comments or if you find any bugs, just post it here in the API forum and I'll help you out.

Have fun,
-Ted

Thanks Ted! Will dive in to this for sure.

Hey that widget is slick. Tried it and it works great. Of course it does!

Ted rocks.

Yes he does. I can't wait to see what this evolves into.

Nice, but how about an upload API? Is this still on the cards?

Can't wait to see what people come up with.

i like the flippy effect!

Is it possible to have a picture of the widget or something like that ? I don't have a mac and I have to say after reading some definitions I don't understand what an API is.

Remyyy, I can do you one better. I posted a quick video of the widget in action:

vimeo.com/clip:160327

Damnit. I'm at work on my PC and all I want to do it go home and test this sucker out.

verseguru: I'd say that an upload API *may* happen. We're just kind of testing the waters now, but you never know what the future holds.

@Ted, I sure hope you do! Been ages since Jakob last mentioned the possibility. And if you do please evaluate using mediasock.org/

verseguru: duly noted.

Hi Ted, great news on the API, one downside, I've just tried using it and the xml output is not usable. It needs a root element to encapsulate the clips otherwise, in my case, when I try and load the xml document into an xmldocument object in .net it throws an exception saying there isn't a root element. This was for the clips method, output xml. All it would need is a clips tag around the clip tag and problem solved (and possibly the xml tag at the start of the file?). Hopefully you can make this change before the api gets used to much?

Secondly, a method to return just a particular clip's info via the api using the clip id would be good. That way we can specify a clipid, instead of using the clips method, and only get one clip, saving you bandwidth and us the need to filter the clips response on the client side. Hope these two things can be done, this would then make it a killer api!

smuggyuk: I noticed that thing with the XML feed. That is certainly a bug and I'll put that up today.

I'll see if we can get it to limit the amount of fields it returns.

Thanks for the suggestions!

PS. I'll post it here when the XML feed is fixed.

smuggyuk: Ok, the XML feed should have an xml tag and the root clips tag. That should make things work a lot better for XML based stuff.

Let me know how it goes.

Looks good, apart from you're missing the ? at the start of the xml tag...? Quick work tho, I'm happy as ever with the response from you guys!

Yikes! Sorry about that. The question mark is back in there... perhaps the work was a little too quick last time.

Magic, that does the trick, I'll get my website updated tomorrow, and details of how I'm using it posted in the forum. Many thanks again for the quick work.

Ted: Couple of other things you might want to clear up. Obviously with the addition of the clips tag, you might want to update the xml snippet on the API page, and also on the same page you give away your development environment url in the javascript example - api.vimeo.localhost - not that it will be much use to anyone outside vimeo, but still, worth mentioning...

smuggyuk: Thanks for pointing that stuff out! The documentation has been updated.

Another useful method you might want to consider adding to the API would be a search method, and one that you can either search the whole of Vimeo, or specify to search a particular user's clips. I could make use of that... ;o)

i had a go! psi-o.net/agsystems/2007/04/03/API-test

bit of a cheeky cobbing together of the code from the API page

I thought maybe i could put the ratio in as a tag and resize the odd formatted ones from there, but i couldnt work out how to parse comma seperated lists :(

cool thanks ted!

I'm trying to access the XML from flash and it doesn't want to load for me. Anybody try this yet? Is there a crossdomain.xml in the mix here that is blocking me from accessing the sweetness that is Vimeo?

I was able to parse the xml in a test environment, but I think the cross domain policy in flash makes it redundant as a web app.

There are a few workarounds on the flashkit boards, although I couldn't get my head round them in the short bit of time I had. Gonna get back on it as soon as uni deadlines are all passed :)

Let me know if you have any success.

edit: it just occured to me that if you could receive the feeds locally on the same server as your flash file via something like wordpress you could probably get around the cross domain problem.

Any reason why I am only getting 21 clips every time? Is there a cap on it right now?

Beta Bummer. Hey, check out this thingy i made. I posted a forum topic for it: artworknotavailable.com/projects/vimeoapi/dragdrop1.htm

That looks/works rad Keith

Is there a way to make a web widget like the OSX widget for web use?

Yeah, i agree. I thought about it. I recently discovered the new widget craze for both PC and OSX thanks to Flash's Apollo.

I will try that.

Hi, are you guys planning on giving us the ability to query for a particular video id? we need this so that we can get the thumbnail url for a given video.

thx

Bringo: We'll probably be offering this in the future.

Any chance of putting a crossdomain.xml up? It would make flash / flex handling possible without hacks. Please oh please. Thanks for the rest of the API you guys rule.

I've noticed all videos start out in "pause/init" mode... is there any programmatic way of getting them to auto-play?

This would be useful for api apps that rely on seeing the videos in a hands-off style, I have a few in mind.

clickykbd: How are you trying to embed the clip? It won't format in the forum, so you probably want to email the embed code to me. It's should be easy enough to figure out my email address: my username (minus the punctuation) at vimeo.com

did i read correctly, above, about tags? Is there a way to RSS tags (ie: Team West U) and embed into a webpage?

I can't seem to generate a Dev Key :/, something wrong?

documeny.submit(); should be the problem, can somebody fix it?

VxJasonxV, kwon: This should be fixed now.

Yep. The key is staring me in the face. Thanks!

I tried out the php example for the advanced API, but my page comes up with the following error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in /var/www/phpVimeo.php on line 18

Which versions of PHP is this code compatible with?

I keep getting a syntax error when i try and use it?