Universal Share API - Developer Tools - Shareaholic
Get More Traffic
You've already got an audience that loves your content, product or service. Profit from helping them tell their friends and followers about you. The Universal Share API will enable the people that visit your website to share articles, comments, purchases and other activities from your website with their friends on multiple social networks. This API is free to use with premium upgrades available, and helps you grow your bottom line and traffic without growing your marketing budget.
Universal Share API Documentation
Shareaholic provides social APIs to connect your site or application to each of the major social networks for sharing. If you can’t use the Shareaholic JavaScript SDK, you can link to these API endpoints directly.
The Shareaholic JavaScript SDK incorporates this API and has many other very useful bells and whistles such as tackling cross device deep linking nuances, including the ability to customize the buttons to match the look and feel of your site or application.
It typically takes less than 10 minutes and 2 lines of code to implement. We highly recommend using the SDK to save time. It is the preferred implementation for Social Sharing Buttons.
You can even use your own icons by turning any DOM element on a page into a Share Button with very simple markup! For example:
<a href data-app="share_buttons" data-app-config='{"service":"facebook"}'>Share</a>
API Designed for Ease
We have optimized for ease of implementation. All API methods are accessible via simple HTTP calls. Most implementations of this API take less than 15 minutes to setup. Simply call the provided URLs with their respective parameters, and you're done.
Getting Started: Authentication
All API endpoints require API authentication credentials to be supplied as query arguments. To get started, you'll need a free Shareaholic account and Site ID. Signup for an account and then add your site to get your Site ID. The Site ID is your API Key.
Example:
...&apikey=8943b7fd64cd8b1770ff5affa9a9437b&...
Share Content with over 95 (and growing!) Destination Services
Let your users share content from any website, desktop app, mobile app, etc to any supported destination service.
Endpoint: https://www.shareaholic.com/api/share/
| Parameter | Description | Required | Example | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
v |
API Version | Required | v=1 | |
apitype |
API Type | Required | apitype=1 (1=Redirect, 2=Pingback, 3=1x1 pixel) | |
apikey |
API Key | Required | apikey=8943b7fd64cd8b1770ff5affa9a9437b | |
service |
Destination Service ID or Code | Required | service=facebook | |
link |
Link | Required | link=https://www.yoursite.com | |
title |
Page Title | Optional | title=My%20Awesome%20Webpage | |
notes |
Notes | Optional | notes=I%20love%20this! | |
media_link |
Media Link | Optional | media_link=https://www.yoursite.com/logo.png | |
short_link |
Shortened Link | Optional | short_link=https://bit.ly/1OTIqm | |
shortener |
URL Shortener | Optional | shortener=shrlc | |
shortener_key |
URL Shortener Credentials | Optional | shortener_key=83932e4c5d02d1f94aea0f40fbc557ec | |
tags |
Tags | Optional | tags=programming,python,howto | |
source |
Source | Optional | source=shareaholic |
Working Example (posting a link to Facebook):
<a href="https://www.shareaholic.com/api/share/?v=1&apitype=1&apikey=8943b7fd64cd8b1770ff5affa9a9437b&service=facebook&title=What%20Do%20Your%20Customers%20Want%20to%20Buy%3F&link=https://nextview.vc/blog/what-do-your-customers-want-to-buy/&source=Shareaholic" target="_blank">Post to Facebook</a>
Notes:
link,short_link,title, andnotesparameters should be URL-encoded, plain text, no HTML, UTF-8.- Parameters should not contain spaces: any parameter with spaces will be rejected. All spaces should be either percent encoded (%20) or plus encoded (+).
Link Tracking & URL Shorteners
Shareaholic can automatically shorten the link for you using a supported shortening service that you specify.
...&shortener=bitly...
We currently support the following shorteners/parameter values:
| shortener= | Description |
|---|---|
| tinyurl | |
| bitly | Includes support for custom bitly domains |
| shrlc | Default |
| none | Do not shorten link |
Templates i.e. customize the format of X Posts, Emails, WhatsApps, SMS / Text Messages
By specifying a templates[][] API parameter, you can customize the default post format for services that support templates. Specifying a template is completely optional.
| Template Token | Description |
|---|---|
| ${title} | Title of the page |
| ${link} | Link to the page |
| ${short_link} | Shortened link to the page |
| ${notes} | Any text; usually a very short summary of the link or user selected text |
Error codes
| Code | Description |
|---|---|
| 100 | apikey not provided |
| 101 | apikey provided is invalid |
| 105 | v not provided |
| 130 | link not provided |
Rate Limits
In order to maintain an efficient, secure, and high-performing API, there are limits on how many times this API can be called in any given period.
Feedback
If you believe you have found a bug, or you’d like to request additional functionality, or you release something using this API, we’d love to hear from you.
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