Important

You are browsing documentation for version 5.1 of OroCommerce, supported until March 2026. Read the documentation for version 6.0 (the latest LTS version) to get up-to-date information.

See our Release Process documentation for more information on the currently supported and upcoming releases.

Web Services API Guide

REST API enables developers to integrate Oro functionality into third-party software systems.

An application programming interface (API) is a software interface which is designed to be used by other software for integration with this application. Whilst an ordinary software program is used by a (human) computer user, an API is a software program used by another software program.

The Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style is an abstraction of the architectural elements within a distributed hypermedia system. REST ignores the details of component implementation and protocol syntax in order to focus on the roles of the components, the constraints on their interaction with other components, and their interpretation of significant data elements. It encompasses the fundamental constraints on components, connectors, and data that define the basis of the Web architecture, and thus the essence of its behavior as a network-based application.

JSON:API is a specification for how a client should request those resources to be fetched or modified, and how a server should respond to them. It is designed to minimize both the number of requests and the amount of data transmitted between the clients and the servers. This efficiency is achieved without compromising on readability, flexibility or discoverability.

Therefore, here and below the term API will refer to the REST API that conforms the JSON:API specification that gives programmatic access to read and write data. Request and response body should use JSON format.

Find more information about Web API in the following topics:

• Enabling an API Feature
• API Sandbox
• Authentication
• Schema
• Available HTTP Methods
• HTTP Header Specifics
• Response Status Codes
• Error Messages
• Resource Fields
• Filters
• Creating and Updating Related Resources with Primary API Resource
• Creating Resource or Updating Existing Resource via Single API Request
• Web API Client Requirements
• Batch API

The documentation for the server-side developers can be found in API Developer Guide.

Business Tip

Looking for the open source b2b ecommerce platform that can meet your business needs? Make sure to check our comprehensive platform comparison page.