Valentine’s Day is a chance to show appreciation for your loved ones. With this theme in mind, we want to share the affection we have for one of our greatest loves…

❤️ The Xero API ❤️ — Oh la la …

When it comes to appreciating our API, everyday is Valentine’s Day.

The Xero API allows developers to perform various tasks, like retrieving and updating financial data, creating invoices, managing bank transactions, and tracking expenses. The API uses RESTful architecture and supports both XML and JSON data formats. What’s not to love?

I had the honour of hosting our special Valentine’s Day Instagram takeover, where I got to share my top five reasons for loving the Xero API. No worries if you haven’t seen it — you can check them out below:

1. It’s well documented

We provide comprehensive documentation and sample code to help developers get started with the API. Find everything you need at developer.xero.com. Simply use the top navigation bar to select Docs > API Reference.

From here, you can browse our detailed documentation for each API and its corresponding endpoints. We show you how API calls are constructed, the expected request and response payloads for GET, PUT and POST calls as well as some optional parameters to get the most out of the Xero data set.

2. Global API support

We have a deeply experienced and global API support team ready to answer your API questions. Contact them at api@xero.com.

3. Extensive SDKs and sample apps across six server-side languages

Our SDKs are here to support our developers when integrating with the Xero API. Use the SDKs and example code provided in our sample apps, across a variety of programming languages to get familiar with the Xero API. Our SDK repositories live over on GitHub, but you can access them all from our SDKs overview page.

4. Detailed how-to guides

Our detailed guides will help you build for the Xero App Store and take you through the certification checkpoints. We have integration guides to help with payroll, taxes, CRMs and more.

5. APIs that span the Xero product

Our Xero API connects to the Xero platform and many of its features. We have an Accounting API, Payroll API, Practice Manager API, Files API and more! Want to learn more about how our API spans the Xero product? Then look no further — head to our API documentation.

OK — one more: Our API Explorer

As a bonus, I also shared one of my favourite tools to use when developing with the Xero API: API Explorer.

Xero API Explorer is a tool we developed in-house to allow developers to interact with the Xero API, quickly and efficiently. It allows developers to try out API requests and see the response before building an actual application. This tool makes it easier for developers to understand the API, test the API endpoints, and see how the API works with real data.

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