⚡Running glifs via the API

The Glif API is in early beta, but we’re excited to see what y'all build.

During limited beta, the Glif API is free and has relatively low rate limits. This is all subject to change. If you're building with our API, please join our Discord or get in touch since we'd love to chat and learn more about what you're building.

Some glif-powered things:

Running glifs using the Simple API

The Simple API requires an API token to make requests

Register for your free token here

curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer abzfasdf2349820349" -d '{"inputs": ["cute friendly oval shaped bot friend"]}' https://simple-api.glif.app/clgh1vxtu0011mo081dplq3xs

Here’s the expected output of that command:

{
  "id": "clgh1vxtu0011mo081dplq3xs",
  "inputs": { "node_6": "cute friendly oval shaped bot friend" },
  "output":"<https://res.cloudinary.com/dzkwltgyd/image/upload/v1686242317/glif-run-outputs/fhbvbp9bwf0pkmm4woj2.png>",
  "outputFull": { "...": "" }
}

You're most likely interested in the output field, which is the final output of the glif.

outputFull is a JSON object with more info about the final output, including it's type.

If there’s an error it’ll be in an error field, but the response will have a "200 OK" status code. For legacy reasons the the Simple API always returns 200 OK. This might change in the future.

Parameters

id

You can put the glif id in the url:

https://simple-api.glif.app/clgh1vxtu0011mo081dplq3xs

Or put it in the body:

{
  "id": "clgh1vxtu0011mo081dplq3xs",
  "inputs": ...
}

inputs

for now only strings values are allowed

You can either use a positional array:

{
  "inputs": ["a happy horse", "living on a farm", "in France"]
}

Or name your parameters. The names have to correspond to your glif-block names. If you don't know the parameter names, check out Looking up the internal names of a glif's inputs.

{
  "inputs": {
    "param1": "a happy horse",
    "param2": "living on a farm",
    "param3": "in France"
  }
}

Looking up the internal names of a glif's inputs

To specify named parameters, you need to use the internal block name. This has no spaces and usually is something like "text1", "multipick2", but each glif creator can customize it.

On the glif.app website you can look at the block names in the "View source" page of a glif, like this one:

Or you can look at the nodes field of a glif's data via our API:

https://glif.app/api/glifs?id=clkbasluf0000mi08h541a3j4 This glif has blocks with the names:

username
ego
radmilk
text1
Full example Glif API response JSON
[
  {
    "id": "clkbasluf0000mi08h541a3j4",
    "name": "chat.welcome",
    "imageUrl": null,
    "description": "",
    "createdAt": "2023-07-20T15:19:11.511Z",
    "updatedAt": "2023-12-01T11:59:23.279Z",
    "output": "Welcome to our Discord Chat, @jamiedubs, where creativity's at!\nWith Tanaki as your guide, prepare for a delightful ride.\nWe'll connect ideas across the land, with art and magic at our command.\nSo join us now, let's collaborate, and create wonders that resonate.",
    "outputType": "TEXT",
    "forkedFromId": null,
    "featuredAt": null,
    "userId": "cli4waaz20002l5082wrs99bx",
    "completedSpellRunCount": 3,
    "user": {
      "id": "cli4waaz20002l5082wrs99bx",
      "name": "tanaki",
      "image": "https://cdn.discordapp.com/avatars/1111720492408262686/a355dbcf07ce472fc7bc382cf0807802.png",
      "username": "tanaki"
    },
    "spheres": [],
    "data": {
      "nodes": [
        {
          "name": "username",
          "type": "TextInputBlock",
          "params": {
            "label": "@username to greet",
            "value": "harrystyles"
          }
        },
        {
          "name": "ego",
          "type": "GlifBlock",
          "params": {
            "id": "clj359oq70000le08nog0a0sb",
            "inputValues": []
          }
        },
        {
          "name": "radmilk",
          "type": "GlifBlock",
          "params": {
            "id": "clpmk3e3x000xqrpfuxrjq6gl",
            "inputValues": []
          }
        },
        {
          "name": "text1",
          "type": "GPTBlock",
          "params": {
            "api": "chat",
            "model": "gpt-4",
            "prompt": "{ego}\nplease keep the above in mind.\n\nI need you to welcome a new user to a discord chat.\n\nAdd a joke in the style of some example jokes. Share the joke as if it were a fact and you are mitch hedberg. Make it weird and under 2 sentences. Don't mention it is a joke. Just tell the joke. Play with their name. Add linebreaks and markdown to format your message where needed.\n\nExample jokes:\n{radmilk}\n\n\nTheir username is:\n{username}\n\nNow write the welcome message in no more than 2 short sentences:\n\n",
            "maxTokens": 500,
            "temperature": 0.9
          }
        }
      ]
    },
    "_count": {
      "likes": 0,
    }
  }
]

Lastly, you can use the commandline to fetch field names dynamically using curl + jq:

curl -s https://glif.app/api/glifs?id=clmdnx8fa0000lf0fbovo8lv1 | jq -r '.[] .data .nodes[] .name'

here's the output:

input1
image1

meaning this glif requires two inputs, input1 and image1. We plan to improve this in the near future.

⚠️ Strict mode and default glif input value substitution

If you do not provide enough inputs, the default values in the glif values will be automatically substituted.

So if you specify arg1, that'll be used, but if it requires arg1 and arg2, it'll use your arg1 but use the defualt value for arg2.

If you'd prefer to have API calls with insufficient inputs to fail, append ?strict=1 to your URLs, e.g. https://simple-api.glif.app?strict=1

⚠️ CORS (cross-origin requests)

CORS is allowed by the Simple API, but not by our other API endpoints. You'll need to make your own serverside wrappers for these cases.

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