Developers & API

The SlideShare API is available free for non-commercial use by outside developers. The current API is based upon the REST model and allows you to perform the following actions:

  • Upload, edit, and delete slideshows
  • Retrieving slideshow information by user, tag, or group
  • Retrieving groups, tags, and contacts by user
  • Search slideshows

You can also use the SlideShare Player API to directly control the player using javascript.

In order to embed slideshows on your webpages you can also use our oEmbed API which follows the oEmbed standard.

Version 2.0 of the API has been released providing the following new features:

  • New methods for fetching user data: get_user_groups, get_user_contacts, get_user_tags
  • Revised output for existing methods to provide better consistency.
  • More reliable and higher quality search.

While version 1.0 of the API is still available, we strongly encourage developers to adopt the new API. All bug fixes and additional feature development will take place solely in the most current version of the API.

Use of the SlideShare API implies full acceptance of the SlideShare API Terms of Service.

Mashups & Applications built with the SlideShare API

Featured Application of the month

  • Slideshare Email App by WiseStamp lets you share your presentations with your friends in a fun and social way. Whenever you send an email, the Slideshare Email App will show your latest presentation and will let your recipients follow you, download your presentation and much more!

  • Quickoffice is a mobile application that allows document editing on the go. In their latest iPad version, they now have the ability to upload a presentation or document to SlideShare.

  • Apture uses our API for contextual viewing of SlideShare presentations on webpages (without leaving the page itself).
  • Blackboard the leading educational software provider uses our API to embed SlideShare presentations into its modules.
  • FireUploader the popular universal uploading tool uses the API to allow uploading presentations to SlideShare from the desktop using a drag & drop interface.
  • Kosmix: the service that lets you explore the web for any topic uses our API to display related SlideShare presentations in its content dashboard.
  • MediaWiki Extension: This ia a parser function for embedding SlideShare presentations into wiki pages. Originally developed for TechPresentations.org project.
  • Omnisio: (now acquired by Google) is a video editing tool that uses our API to let users synchonize SlideShare presentations with videos.
  • Plaxo uses our API/RSS to let users display presentations on their Plaxo profile.
  • Presentation Pack is a widget offered by SlideShare to all users. This is based on a prototype that was built by one of our users using the SlideShare API.

  • Slide by Slide is a (free) iPhone/iPad app that lets you search and browse SlideShare presentations in a simple way. Built using our APIs, you can download it from the Itunes store.

  • Slide2Lead synchronizes your SlideShare documents, campaigns, leads, and document statistics with Salesforce CRM. Leads are are imported directly into Salesforce CRM in real-time.

  • SlidePad is a iPad app that lets you search and browse SlideShare presentations in a simple way. Built using our APIs, you can download it from the Itunes store.

  • SlideShare Microsoft Powerpoint Ribbon uses our API to let users install a SlideShare toolbar inside Powerpoint 2007 (and above). The basic features of SlideShare can be accessed from inside Powerpoint using this ribbon.
  • SlideShare Platform Applications: Our APIs power the SlideShare apps on Facebook & LinkedIn. These apps are used by millions of people everyday.
  • Social Mention the popular real-time social media search & analysis website uses our API for searching and displaying SlideShare presentations on any topic.
  • Tokbox the live video calling application uses our API for viewing a SlideShare presentation inside a video call.
  • Vcasmo is a presentation service that uses our API to let users synchronize a YouTube video with a SlideShare presentation so that they play in sync.
  • Windows Live uses our API to publish your SlideShare activity feed on your Windows Live profile.
  • Wordpress.tv uses our API to embed presentations on Wordpress.tv, an invaluable resource on all things Wordpress.
  • Zemanta the popular blogging tool uses our API to allow users embed semantically suggested SlideShare presentation inside their blog posts.
  • Zend Frameworks: Zend_Service_SlideShare is a component which encapsulates the SlideShare web services in an easy to use PHP API.
  • Zentation uses our API to synchronize videos and SlideShare presentations in an experience that best simulates the live experience.
  • 280Slides the online presentation authoring tool uses our API to allow users publish their 280 slides presentations to SlideShare.

There are many others mashups/applications that use the SlideShare API. If you are a developer building one yourself, let us know. Your application might get featured in this section. For more details, please go here.

How do I start?

Also, Check out our RSS feeds! They contain a lot of rich data (including slideshow embed codes and thumbnails) that can be useful in creating your mashup.