Experience Level
This core reference entry is suited for advanced-level builders.
In-depth articles
In-depth articles
To learn about this topic more in-depth, we recommend reading the suggested articles:
Introduction to APIs
This article series takes an in-depth look at what exactly an API is and how you can both set up an API in Bubble and connect to external APIs in different ways.
Article: Introduction to APIs
Video: Introduction to APIs
Article: What is a RESTful API?
Authenticating with the Bubble API
Authentication is the process of identifying who the client is in order to determine what they have access to.
Article series: The Bubble API and authentication
Authentication types
The Bubble API lets clients authenticate in different ways:
How to set up authentication in the external system
The Bubble uses the bearer token method to authenticate clients.
The Data API
The Data API lets you set up an API in your Bubble application that accepts incoming requests to search for, read, create, edit and delete entries in your database.
Article series: The Data API
Video lesson
Video lesson
Postman Collection
Postman Collection
Bubble offers a Postman collection. This collection is specifically designed to help developers understand and experiment with the various API functionalities available in Bubble.
External page: Bubble Postman collection
Enabling the Data API
The Data API is disabled by default. To enable it, go to Settings - API and check the box 'This app exposes a Data API'. This allows you to select one-by-one which data types are exposed in the Data API.
The Data API and privacy rules
Access to data is controlled by the privacy rules applied to that particular data type.
View all fields
If this box is checked, the client will be able to retrieve all the fields on all the things of a given data type. If you uncheck this box you can check which fields are returned one-by-one.
Find this in searches
If this box is checked, the client will be able to retrieve a list of things of a given data type, optionally using search constraints.
View attached files
If this box is checked, the client will be able to retrieve files saved to a given data type.
Allow auto-binding
This setting does not affect clients who access the database via the Data API.
Data API Privacy Rules
Whenever the Data API is enabled for a database thing, three new options are available in that thing’s privacy rule:
Create via API
Modify via API
Delete via API
These settings only apply to clients that access the database via the Data API. All three are disabled by default on existing privacy rules. They do not affect your application’s regular users or your API Workflows.