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# Using the APIs
* [Home](help)
Friendica offers multiple API endpoints to interface with third-party applications:
- [Twitter](help/API-Twitter) - [Mastodon](help/API-Mastodon) - [Friendica-specific](help/API-Friendica) - [GNU Social](help/API-GNU-Social)
## Usage
### HTTP Method
API endpoints can restrict the HTTP method used to request them. Using an invalid method results in HTTP error 405 “Method Not Allowed”.
### Authentication
Friendica supports basic HTTP Auth and OAuth 1 to authenticate the user to the APIs.
OAuth settings can be added by the user in web UI under [/settings/oauth/](/settings/oauth/).
### Errors
When an error occurs in API call, an HTTP error code is returned, with an error message Usually:
* 400 Bad Request: if parameters are missing or items can't be found * 403 Forbidden: if the authenticated user is missing * 405 Method Not Allowed: if API was called with an invalid method, eg. GET when API require POST * 501 Not Implemented: if the requested API doesn't exist * 500 Internal Server Error: on other error conditions
Error body is
json:
```json {
"error": "Specific error message", "request": "API path requested", "code": "HTTP error code"
} ```
xml:
```xml <status>
<error>Specific error message</error> <request>API path requested</request> <code>HTTP error code</code>
</status> ```
## Usage Examples
### BASH / cURL
```bash /usr/bin/curl -u USER:PASS https://YOUR.FRIENDICA.TLD/api/statuses/update.xml -d source=“some source id” -d status=“the status you want to post” ```
### Python
The [RSStoFriendika](https://github.com/pafcu/RSStoFriendika) code can be used as an example of how to use the API with python. The lines for posting are located at [line 21](https://github.com/pafcu/RSStoFriendika/blob/master/RSStoFriendika.py#L21) and following.
def tweet(server, message, group_allow=None): url = server + '/api/statuses/update' urllib2.urlopen(url, urllib.urlencode({'status': message,'group_allow[]':group_allow}, doseq=True))
There is also a [module for python 3](https://bitbucket.org/tobiasd/python-friendica) for using the API.