Get started with Trello's REST API

The Trello API is a RESTful web API that provides access to Trello's resources. You can use the API to retrieve information from your boards, cards, and members, or create, update, and delete content.

The benefits of using Trello’s API

Trello’s API can be used to:

• Access Trello data by making RESTful API requests

• Send data between Trello and other systems by writing custom scripts

• Share information between Trello and other apps, such as CRMs, for example

• Create custom Power-Ups that perform certain actions on a user’s behalf

How to talk about an API

Before we get started, let’s learn some terminology that we’ll use when talking about APIs.

Generate an API key and token

To start using Trello’s API, you’ll need an API key. To generate an API key, you first need to create a Trello Power-Up. Creating a Power-Up is necessary to access Trello’s API because it’s tied to the process of generating an API key, and allows your key to be identified during the authentication process. Visit our guide to create your first Power-Up

After creating your Power-Up, generate your API token:

1. Go to the https://trello.com/power-ups/admin page

2. Click on your Power-Up then the API key tab

3. Click the Token link at the end of the paragraph to the right of your API key to proceed to the authorization page

Allow the token to access your account

The token authorization page explains:

• Which account the token can access

• What it can do (also called its scope)

A token remains active until you disable it, and will be able to access any boards and Workspaces you gain access to in the future.

The token will be able to:

• Read your name and username

• Make comments as you

• Read your email address

• Read your Enterprises

• Update and manage your Enterprises

• Read all of your boards and Workspaces

• Create and update cards, lists, boards, and Workspaces

• Read Power-Ups you own

• Update Power-Ups you own

The token will not be able to:

• See your Trello password

Once you click Allow, you’ll grant your own Power-Up access to your account, and you’ll be redirected to a page that contains your API key and token.

Make your first API call

Now that you have your account's API key and token, you can start making API calls.

One of the most popular API calls in Trello is the board's API endpoint. You can make a GET request to the API 1/members/{memberId}/boards endpoint and list all of the boards associated with your user. For this example, we’ll use cURL in your computer’s terminal application.

Open the terminal application, and type the following:

curl 'https://api.trello.com/1/members/me/boards?key={yourKey}&token={yourToken}'

There are many ways you can use Trello’s API to send API calls, such as:

• Coding languages (JavaScript, Python, PHP, Node.JS, etc.) in case you want to write a script that interacts with Trello’s API.

• API platforms like Postman or SoapUI. These API platforms offer user-friendly interfaces for APIs.

It’s totally up to you to decide which platform or coding language suits your needs.

Make sense of the response

JSON is designed for computers to read instead of people, so it will look like a long unformatted block of text. Later, you can use a text editor or other tools to format JSON so it’s readable if you want to. For now, find the first board ID:

To find the first board ID:

1. Scroll back to where you entered your first request

2. Immediately after the request, you’ll see a 24 character ID formatted like this:[{"id":"xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",

3. Copy the ID from inside the quotes

Make another API call with information from the first call

With the information you have in the response, you can get more information from one of your particular boards.

To make your second API call:

1. Copy one of the board IDs from the JSON response

2. Replace the {idBoard} text in the following API call with the board ID:

curl 'https://api.trello.com/1/boards/{idBoard}?key={yourKey}&token={yourToken}'

The response will contain information about the board with that ID. You can find the board’s name and description near the beginning of the response, for example.

This is just an example of how to get started using the Trello API, and from here, there are many directions you can explore. Feel free to delve into the Trello API documentation to discover more about its capabilities.

More API call examples:

• Get all the boards of your Workspace: curl 'https://api.trello.com/1/members/me/organizations/{organizationId}/boards

• Get all cards on a board: curl 'https://api.trello.com/1/boards/{boardId}/cards?key=APIKey&token=APIToken

• Get all users of Trello Enterprise: curl 'https://api.trello.com/1/enterprises/{enterpriseId}/members/query?key=APIKey&token=APIToken

While we don’t offer support for custom scripts or user-generated development, we do have an active community of developers. We’re happy you’re curious about using Trello’s API, and we strongly encourage you to seek guidance and support in Trello’s Developer Community.

Additional resources:

• Trello API documentation

• Detailed API introduction

• Trello Developer Community