The MOO Blog
Let’s get technical. Announcing the MOO API
Over the last 12 months there have been a fair few changes to the MOO website, but we’ve also been hard at work behind the scenes developing a new API
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the API was soft launched a few weeks back (in beta), but now we’re making it official – we have a new API and we want you to use it!
But what actually is it, we hear you cry? Well, in tech terms, our API is a tool which implements all the features that our back end supports, slightly surpassing that of our own website – for example, the API makes double-sided Printfinity a possibility. It’s really great, because it means the sky’s the limit when it comes to transforming your Business Card design ideas into reality.
Of course, ever since we sneakily launched it, some of you immediately got creative, and the results have been fantastic. One of our favourite new programmes made using the API is MOO Vouchers– a great little tool that allows you to put a unique voucher code on every card, like our resourceful friends at Perch.
MOO Vouchers are perfect for all sorts of ventures. From seasonal loyalty discount vouchers included with customer purchases, to event raffles, to special drinks vouchers in bars and clubs for VIP’s, there’s an infinite number of ways to use the unique codes generated by this tool. And of course, with our short print runs, you can come up with lots of different ideas! The best part is, someone else has done the hard work so you don’t have to – all you need to do is upload some codes.
If you haven’t heard the term “eating our own dog food”, you might find it a strange analogy to say that as far as our API is concerned, that’s what we’re doing. What we mean is, we believe so strongly in it, we’ve built the latest version of our website as a client of its own API. And you can’t get a clearer endorsement than that!
The API will allow developers to build their own design process on top of the MOO back end. The following is a brief summary of the features:
- Support for all products
- Use any of MOO’s templates or create your own design and upload as a full side design
- Support for PDF, JPEG, PNG and GIF upload (either as part of one of our templates, or as a full side design)
- Upload images directly to MOO or provide a URL
- Flexible card distribution, i.e. you can specify how many of each card should appear in a pack
- Either provide MOO a fully designed pack, or you can partially design the pack and drop into MOO’s UI so we finish the job
- Either design your cards in an ‘all in one’ API call, or make several calls as part of a step by step process
- Checkout and shipping via the MOO cart
- You retain full rights and ownership of your images and designs
So if you’re technically minded, we encourage you to start off the New Year by experimenting with the API and seeing what you can create. If you’re more of an ideas person – well, just make friends with a developer and tell them what you want!
Find out more about the full range of features offered by our API here (http://www.moo.com/api ) and here. (http://groups.google.com/group/mooapi)
Love your products!! Keep moving forward.
Fantastic! This could be handy for people giving away music – one code per card means controlled downloads. Thanks Moo!
I really wish there was an easy PHP template to use the API in order to link to Moo to allow people to purchase postcards. I really want to allow this on my website from an already made design, however I just can’t get my head around the API. Any really easy templates/code examples I can use?