The Era of the API Begins

One of the aspects we love about Wufoo is that it is easy to use. Any person of any skill level can come to the site, and have a form online within minutes. As many have noticed, simplicity comes at a price — lack of power. So, while it is our job to balance simplicity and power, we still wish we could help everyone out. We receive many specific, targeted feature request that we can’t always fulfill. With that in mind, we [began making our API](https://help.wufoo.com/articles/en_US/kb/Wufoo-REST-API-V3/ “Wufoo API”). Our goal with the API is to allow easy, flexible, programmatic access to your Wufoo account, so that any custom feature request you have can be achieved.

For the non techies, an API is just a simple programming interface that allows for querying, submitting to, and editing your Wufoo data. The nice part about an API is that it does not solely benefit programmers. At first, the API will not be of much use to non programmers. Over time, a community will evolve and examples will appear that begin to open things up. Before long, copying and pasting one line of code onto your site will open up a new world of Wufoo functionality. Here are a few examples of things that will be opened up:

– The ability to place a form on your site without an iframe. In fact, you will even be able to use your own markup if you desire.
– Show information submitted into your account on your own site without the need for reports.
– Further process your form submissions. After the data is sent to us, you will be able to run your own processing through it before the confirmation page is triggered.
– See the growth of plug and play widgets powered by Wufoo, such as polls, calendars, and file browsers.

The API will be a continuously expanding project, and we’re excited about the possibilities. For this first implementation, the API is still in testing mode. We would like to iron out any inconsistencies before releasing more power. This iteration contains the query API, which will allow you to browse through your Wufoo data and format it. For example, you could create export to XML in addition to the already existing Excel and CSV. In the near future we will release the reports and submit API’s, so stay tuned to the [docs](https://help.wufoo.com/articles/en_US/kb/Wufoo-REST-API-V3/ “API Docs”) and [forums](http://www.wufoo.com/forums/ “Forums”) because we will be adding examples and more functionality.

The start of the API also marks [Wufoo version 1.1](http://www.wufoo.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=97 “Wufoo 1.1”). Along with the API, key upgrades include more consistent exporting, duplicate and rename themes, and multiple field changes such as required, randomize, and default values on various fields. Check out the [change log](http://www.wufoo.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=97 “Wufoo 1.1”) for more!

Comments

  • The API is going to be very helpful. Having made a couple unsuccessful trips down the contract form development road we learned forms design is a lot harder than it looks. With the “fail early, fail often” approach in mind I can build a from, test, redo, test, redo until the questions are right, the order of the questions works for the users of the form. When all these huge issues are settled (not that there won’t be changes) it is safe to bring in a programmer to access the data via the API and develop some high level functionality. This is going to be interesting.

    Posted September 25th, 2006 by mhdoc.

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