Skip to main content

Strapi APIs to access your content

Once you've created and configured a Strapi project, created a data structure with the Content-Type Builder and started adding data through the Content Manager, you likely would like to access your content.

From a front-end application, your content can be accessed through Strapi's Content API, which is exposed:

REST and GraphQL APIs represent the top-level layers of the Content API exposed to external applications. Strapi also provides 2 lower-level APIs:

  • The Entity Service API is the recommended API to interact with your application's database within the backend server or through plugins. The Entity Service is the layer that handles Strapi's complex data structures like components and dynamic zones, which the lower-level layers are not aware of.
  • The Query Engine API interacts with the database layer at a lower level and is used under the hood to execute database queries. It gives unrestricted internal access to the database layer, but should be used only if the Entity Service API does not cover your use case.
  flowchart BT
      database[(Database)] <--> queryEngine[Query Engine API]
      subgraph Strapi backend
          direction BT
          queryEngine <--> entityService[Entity Service API]
          entityService <--> content([Your content])
          content <--> rest[REST API]
          content <--> graphql[GraphQL API]
      end
      rest <= frontend{{Your frontend application}}
      graphql <= frontend
      click rest "/dev-docs/api/rest"
      click graphql "/dev-docs/api/graphql"
      click entityService "/dev-docs/api/entity-service"
      click queryEngine "/dev-docs/api/query-engine"

This documentation section includes reference information about the following Strapi APIs and some integration guides with 3rd party technologies:

Plugin APIs

Plugins also have their dedicated APIs: the Server API and the Admin Panel API. These plugin-related APIs are offered to develop plugins and allow a plugin to interact either with the back-end server of Strapi (Server API) or with the admin panel of Strapi (Admin Panel API).