Introduction

Welcome to the Bannerbear API!

Bannerbear is a service that exposes design templates as a simple JSON-based API.

1. Your designer designs a template in Bannerbear
2. We turn it into an API
3. You use this API to generate variations of the template in JPG format

Authentication

To test your API key:

curl "https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/auth"
  -H "Authorization: Bearer API_KEY"

Make sure to replace API_KEY with your API key.

Bannerbear uses API keys to allow access to the API. You can get an API key by creating a project in Bannerbear.

Bannerbear expects the API key to be included in all API requests to the server in a header that looks like the following:

Authorization: Bearer API_KEY

Images

Create an Image

To create a request:

curl "https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/images"
  -H "Authorization: Bearer API_KEY"
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" 
  -d json

The above endpoint returns JSON like this:

{
  "created_at": "2020-02-20T07:59:23.077Z",
  "status": "pending",
  "self": "https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/images/kG39R5XbvPQpLENKBWJj",
  "uid": "kG39R5XbvPQpLENKBWJj",
  "image_url": null,
  "template": "6A37YJe5qNDmpvWKP0",
  "modifications": [
    {
      "name": "title",
      "text": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amed",
      "color": null,
      "background": null
    },
    {
      "name": "avatar",
      "image_url": "https://www.bannerbear.com/assets/sample_avatar.jpg"
    }
  ],
  "webhook_url": null,
  "webhook_response_code": null,
  "metadata": null
}

This endpoint creates a new image.

HTTP Request

POST https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/images

Post Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
template	string	The template id you want to use
modifications	array	A list of Modifications you want to make
webhook_url optional	string	A url to POST the Image object to upon rendering completed
metadata optional	string	Metadata that you need to store e.g. ID of a record in your DB

Modification Object

Attribute	Type	Description
name	string	The name of the item you want to change
text	string	Replacement text you want to use
color	string	Color hex of object e.g. "#FF0000"
background	string	Color hex of text background
image_url	string	Replacement image url you want to use (must be publicly viewable)

All attributes are optional, for example if you do not specify a color, the object's default color will be used.

Status

All images are created with the status pending.

Images are usually rendered within a few seconds. When completed, the status changes to completed.

You can poll the GET endpoint for status updates. The self attribute of the response provides this endpoint.

Webhooks

Instead of polling, we recommended you define a webhook in webhook_url which Bannerbear will POST the Image object to after image rendering is complete. The rendered image url is found in the image_url attribute of the Image object.

To secure your webhook endpoint, Bannerbear will POST with the following header:

Authorization: Bearer WEBHOOK_KEY

You can find your project's webhook key in its settings page.

Get a Specific Image

To get an image:

curl "https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/images/kG39R5XbvPQpLENKBWJj"
  -H "Authorization: Bearer API_KEY"

The above endpoint returns JSON like this:

{
  "created_at": "2020-02-20T07:59:23.077Z",
  "status": "completed",
  "self": "https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/images/kG39R5XbvPQpLENKBWJj",
  "uid": "kG39R5XbvPQpLENKBWJj",
  "image_url": "https://cdn.bannerbear.com/...",
  "template": "6A37YJe5qNDmpvWKP0",
  "modifications": [
    {
      "name": "title",
      "text": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amed",
      "color": null,
      "background": null
    },
    {
      "name": "avatar",
      "image_url": "https://www.bannerbear.com/assets/sample_avatar.jpg"
    }
  ],
  "webhook_url": null,
  "webhook_response_code": null,
  "metadata": null
}

This endpoint retrieves a specific request.

After creating an image request you will receive a uid. You can poll this endpoint to find out when the image has been rendered. When the status is completed the image url will be available in image_url.

HTTP Request

GET https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/images/<uid>

Parameters

Parameter	Description
uid	The uid of the request to retrieve

Templates

List Templates

To list a project's templates:

curl "https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/templates"
  -H "Authorization: Bearer API_KEY"

The above endpoint returns a JSON array like this:

[
  {
    "created_at": "2020-03-17T01:58:07.358Z",
    "name": "Twitter Demo",
    "self": "https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/templates/04PK8K2bctXHjqB97O",
    "uid": "04PK8K2bctXHjqB97O",
    "preview_url": null,
    "width": 1000,
    "height": 1000,
    "available_modifications": [
      {
        "name": "avatar",
        "image_url": null
      },
      {
        "name": "name",
        "text": null
      },
      {
        "name": "handle",
        "text": null
      },
      {
        "name": "body",
        "text": null
      }
    ]
  } 
]

This endpoint lists a project's templates.

This endpoint may be useful for applications with many templates that need to show users a selection, before using the Images endpoint to generate an image based on a chosen template.

HTTP Request

GET https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/templates

Template Preview

Each time you edit a template in Bannerbear, a thumbnail is saved and made available in the preview_url attribute of the Template object.

Get a Specific Template

To get a template:

curl "https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/templates/04PK8K2bctXHjqB97O"
  -H "Authorization: Bearer API_KEY"

The above endpoint returns JSON like this:

{
  "created_at": "2020-03-17T01:58:07.358Z",
  "name": "Twitter Demo",
  "self": "https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/templates/04PK8K2bctXHjqB97O",
  "uid": "04PK8K2bctXHjqB97O",
  "preview_url": null,
  "width": 1000,
  "height": 1000,
  "available_modifications": [
    {
      "name": "avatar",
      "image_url": null
    },
    {
      "name": "name",
      "text": null
    },
    {
      "name": "handle",
      "text": null
    },
    {
      "name": "body",
      "text": null
    }
  ]
}

HTTP Request

GET https://api.bannerbear.com/v2/templates/<uid>

Parameters

Parameter	Description
uid	The uid of the template to retrieve

Errors

The Bannerbear API uses the following error codes:

Error Code	Meaning
202	Accepted -- Your request is has been accepted for processing
200	OK
400	Bad Request -- Your request is invalid.
401	Unauthorized -- Your API key is wrong.
404	Not Found -- The specified request could not be found.
429	Too Many Requests -- Slow down!
500	Internal Server Error -- We had a problem with our server. Try again later.
503	Service Unavailable -- We're temporarily offline for maintenance. Please try again later.

The Bannerbear API rate limit is 10 requests per 10 seconds.