A new Ghost Admin API

Ghost has always had a REST API at its very core, but for the first few years while we were fleshing out basic features there wasn't a whole lot you could do with it. Now, all your favourite apps work with Ghost!

At the beginning of this year we announced a brand new, public Content API making it possible to easily pull any content out of Ghost. This also made it possible, for the first time, to use Ghost as a fully headless CMS.

Today we're excited to be able to share our new Admin API, which does just the opposite: It creates total flexibility around how you get content in to Ghost.

Now you can use mobile and desktop writing clients, or create your own custom Ghost Admin integrated into your own apps/workflow. It's the final piece of the puzzle to complete the architecture we've been working towards for a few years now, which involves making this little green dot less lonely:

All of these different pieces come together to create a robust publishing experience – but because they're decoupled, there's room for customisation to suit any modern development and workflow requirements.

Sounds great, so what does all that mean in practice?

Brand new integrations

Firstly, we're thrilled to be launching the new Ghost Admin API with 4 wonderful partners who we've been working with for the last few months:

🚢 NEW: Ulysses Integration

One of the most requested integrations we've ever had! Ulysses is an extremely powerful and widely loved desktop editor for Mac, now with full Ghost integration so you can send draft posts directly to Ghost.

🚢 NEW: iA Writer Integration

The original Ghost editor was partially based on iA Writer's gorgeous minimal design, and as of iA Writer 5.2 you can now also send posts directly to Ghost from both MacOS and iOS. The iA Writer team helped us refine and improve the Admin API while it was in development, so a big thanks to them.

🚢 NEW: Write.as Integration

After being unceremoniously kicked-off the Medium API for no reason at all a few months ago, we reached out to the Write.as team to offer them an open alternative. We're thrilled to be able to share a great new integration here which can never be shut down or restricted.

🚢 NEW: Zapier v2 Integration

Of course we couldn't add a new API without a major update to our Zapier integration - which hits V2 today - and opens up Admin API access to over 1,000 other apps and services all over the web. You can now send content into Ghost from almost anywhere!

Note: If you're already using Ghost<>Zapier, you'll need to remove and re-connect your Ghost site in order to use the new version of the app.

Developer details

Technically speaking, there are several different aspects to this update which come together to make all these new things possible.

🚢 NEW: Admin API

The latest updates provides secure role-based permissions, predictable resource URLs, standard HTTP verbs, response codes and authentication. It enables full control for creating, editing or deleting publication data. Ghost Admin uses the Admin API – which means you can do everything Ghost Admin can do, and more. Unlike several other platforms, our Admin API isn't a bolt-on afterthought; it's a first class citizen at the heart of the core platform.

🚢 NEW: JavaScript Client Library

We've also shipped an API client for JavaScript designed for use with integrations that use private API keys, to simplify authentication and make it easier to read and write data. This supports publishing workflows such as sending content from an desktop editor, automating social media sharing or syncing data to and from email campaigns.

const api = new GhostAdminAPI({
  url: 'https://localhost:2368',
  key: 'YOUR_ADMIN_API_KEY',
  version: 'v2'
});

api.posts.add({
    title: 'My first draft API post',
    mobiledoc: '{\"version\":\"0.3.1\",\"atoms\":[],\"cards\":[],\"markups\":[],\"sections\":[[1,\"p\",[[0,[],0,\"My post content. Work in progress...\"]]]]}'
});

We're continuously adding new tools to our integrations library, including deep integrations that are supported by our Admin API.

Ghost(Pro) users have already been updated and have access to everything mentioned here. Self hosted developers can use Ghost-CLI to get the latest features by running $ ghost update to install the latest release.