API Overview

Here are some resources that will help you understand the basics of all our APIs. If you haven’t already, make sure that you have familiarized yourself with the Developer Rules of the Road. Check out the OAuth section to learn more about how we do authentication and authorization.

API Objects

There are four main “objects” that you’ll encounter in the API: Tweets, Users, Entities (see also Entities in Objects), and Places. See the anatomy of these objects, and learn about properties like Twitter IDs or Place Attributes to know what to expect.

Connecting to and navigating around the APIs

Check out our best practices around Connecting to Twitter API using SSL, Using cursors to navigate collections and Error Codes & Responses to learn how to most effectively interact with our APIs.

Twitter Libraries

Ready to get started? Check out our collections of Twitter Libraries — spanning everything from Java to Ruby to Objective-C — to help you get started.