API Overview

Netflix supplies three sets of API components:

JavaScript API

The JavaScript API helps you emulate the Netflix experience in your application. It lets you add functional Netflix “Add” and “Play” buttons. See Javascript API Reference for more information.

Netflix REST API

A set of REST (representational state transfer) APIs that give you fine-grained access to such Netflix resources as the title catalog, subscriber queues, and rental activity. See REST API Conventions for more information on Netflix API 1.5.

Atom feeds

The Atom feeds enable people and applications to read Netflix feed data such as subscriber queues. You discover feeds via the Netflix API but can then access them without additional authentication.

To use these APIs, you need to register for a developer account:

• Please be sure to instruct your email reader to accept all email from both mashery.com and netflix.com before you register your application so your registration confirmation email doesn’t accidentally get lost in your spam filter.
• Register your application at http://developer.netflix.com/apps/register/. When you register, you will receive a “key” and a “secret” that your application then uses to access Netflix resources.
• If your new key has a status of “waiting” for an excessive amount of time after you complete the registration process, write to apisupport@netflix.com and ask us to look into the problem.

Different APIs and resource types have different security requirements; for some you may have to supply other identification mechanisms such as signatures and access tokens. See Authentication Overview for more information on how to do this.

The Netflix APIs allow you to integrate Netflix user services into your application, for example:

• performing searches of movies, TV series, cast members, and directors
• retrieving catalog titles and details about each title such as box art, director, cast list, etc.
• determining the subscriber’s relationship to a specific title (e.g, in queue, saved, etc.)
• managing and displaying subscribers’ queues
• providing auto-completion of partial search terms typed by a user
• displaying a subscriber’s ratings
• including functional Add and Play buttons in your web application