AddThis Sharing Endpoints
• Calling from Flash
• Sharing Flash Content
• URL Shortening
• Rate Limiting
• Sharing to Twitter
Overview
AddThis offers a set of URL endpoints that allow you to share content from your website to any of our supported destination services. If you don't want to, or can't, use the AddThis JavaScript in-page tools (our Client API), you can just link to these server endpoints directly. Just send the user's browser to these endpoints and AddThis' backend will put the user thorugh the appropriate destination-specific sharing process.
For example, this link uses the generic endpoint to share addthis.com, and this one shares to Facebook directly. Here's what the HTML looks like:
<a href="http://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/offer?url=http://addthis.com" rel="nofollow">this link</a>
<a href="http://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/facebook/offer?url=http://addthis.com" rel="nofollow">this one</a>
The endpoints give you a uniform URL pattern, regardless of the destination (this pattern is oexchange-compliant). You control the client side -- simple HTML links, fancy buttons and UI treatments, Flash applications, or any other technique you can use to call out to a browser. You have full control over the user experience, but still have access to the broad set of destination services and publisher analytics that the AddThis platform offers.
Note: These endpoints are intended to be called directly by browsers and are designed for user interaction, and therefore cannot be called by scripts or backend services. We strongly recommend adding rel="nofollow" attributes to your HTML tags, otherwise search engine crawlers who follow your sharing api links can generate false shares in your analytics reports.
Unsupported Sharing Endpoint Services: Print, Favorites, Email App.
Endpoint Specification
All sharing endpoints are rooted at, and begin with:
http://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8
Share Menu
This endpoint renders a full-page sharing menu with buttons for all of our destination services. Use this endpoint when you know which URL is being shared, and you want to prompt the user with a set of possible destinations.
- Endpoint:
/offer - Example: http://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/offer?url=http://addthis.com (try it!)
Parameters:
| Name | Description | Type | Required? | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
url | URL of the page being shared. | string | yes | http://addthis.com |
title | Title of the page being shared. | string | no | AddThis Home Page |
description | Short description of the page being shared. | string | no | AddThis: One button. Your content everywhere. |
pubid | Your publisher profile ID (used to attribute shares, in your analytics). | string | no | addthis |
Share Forward
This endpoint redirects the browser to the specified site to complete a share. Use this endpoint when you know which URL is being shared and the desired destination. Pass the destination service code on the url path as shown.
- Endpoint:
/forward/SERVICE_CODE/offer - Example: http://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/facebook/offer?url=http://addthis.com (try it!)
SERVICE_CODE is just the short code for a supported service, as listed here.
Parameters:
| Name | Description | Type | Required? | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
url | URL of the page being shared. | string | yes | http://addthis.com |
title | Title of the page being shared. | string | no | AddThis Home Page |
description | Short description of the page being shared. | string | no | AddThis: One button. Your content everywhere. |
pubid | Your publisher profile ID (used to attribute shares, in your analytics). | string | no | addthis |
email_template | Email template to use for email sharing (requires pubid param) | string | no | my_template |
ct | Enable click tracking (shared page must have AddThis client code to measure clicks) | string | no | ct=1 |
| |
Note: The template parameter has been deprecated in favor of the new Twitter intents parameters which are documented below.
Calling the Endpoints from Flash
These endpoints are extremely easy to integrate into Flash applications. Take a look at this guide for detail and example code.
Sharing Flash Content
The simplest way to call the endpoints is by passing a URL to a web resource. This URL can contain embedded Flash content, as described in this guide.
Specifying Flash Content Directly
In addition to operating on on-page tags, both versions of the endpoints also accept additional parameters to allow passing Flash object information directly, in cases where you can't decorate the page as is usually recommended.
Flash-Content Parameters
See the embedded content documentation for more information about these parameters, and when to use them.
| Name | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
screenshot | The URL of an image that can be used to show a preview of the page being shared | http://www.example.com/img/preview2374.png |
swfurl | The URL of a Flash SWF to be shared(height and width are required if you provide this) | http://www.example.com/assets/flash/mycoolflashthingy.swf |
height | The ideal height of the Flash object | 300 |
width | The ideal height of the Flash object | 500 |
URL Shortening
We will automaticallly shorten urls shared to twitter if they're longer than 40 chars. If you like you can request url shortening on any share using our endpoints. Simply add the shortener=bitly parameter to your request and we will shorten your shared url with bit.ly before passing it to the destination. You can also shorten with your bitly account by passing these parameters:
shortener=bitlybitly.login=<your bitly username>bitly.apiKey=<your bitly api key>
If you have an awe.sm account you can shorten with awe.sm instead:
shortener=awesmawesm.key=<your awesm Account API Key>(required)
Providing your account details will integrate your shares with your bit.ly or awe.sm click analytics.
Rate Limiting
Requests will be rate limited at 1000 requests/hour per ip address.
Sharing to Twitter
You can customize your Twitter shares with a few extra parameters on your request (optional). These parameters are passed through to Twitter and work as described in their web intents specification.
Optional Twitter Parameters
| Name | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
text | Text to show in the tweet, instead of the link's title. | Check out this link |
via | A Twitter account which is appended to your tweet like: "[text] [url] via @[via]" | addthis |
related | Comma separated list of related twitter accounts, suggested to the user after they tweet. | clearspring,numbakrrunch |
Note: To use these options you must not pass the template parameter which has been deprecated.