Owncast Web APIs

The web APIs are how code running outside Owncast talks to your server over HTTP. They come in two halves:

• Webhooks notify your application when something happens on the stream, like a chat message arriving or the stream going live. Owncast sends an HTTP POST to an endpoint you host.
• APIs let your application send actions back into Owncast, such as posting a chat message or updating the stream title. Requests are authenticated with an access token.

To receive webhooks, create an endpoint on any web server, in any language, that accepts an HTTP POST. Each event payload carries a type field naming the event and an eventData object with its details.

Example

API reference

Browse every endpoint in the released API or the in-development API.

Development environment

Host your code anywhere and write it in any language. It needs to be reachable by your Owncast server to receive webhooks, and able to reach your server to call the APIs. While developing locally, a tunneling tool like ngrok or Cloudflare Tunnel gives your machine a temporary public URL so Owncast can deliver webhooks to it. When you are ready, move the code to any server or hosting platform you like.

Run your code inside Owncast instead

If you would rather your code run inside the server than call it over HTTP, plugins are the other way to build. See ways to extend Owncast for how the two approaches compare.