What is REST API?

REST (Representational State Transfer) is the most common architectural style for web APIs. In the design automation context, a REST API is how your application communicates with an image generation service to create, manage, and retrieve rendered images.

How REST APIs work in design automation:

Typical endpoints (Layerre):

• POST /v1/template, Create a template from a Canva share URL
• GET /v1/templates, List your templates
• GET /v1/template/{template_id}, Get a template with all layers (IDs, types, defaults)
• POST /v1/template/{template_id}/variant, Create a rendered variant (override layer properties, set export_type)
• GET /v1/template/{template_id}/variants, List variants for a template

Authentication:

Most design automation APIs use API key authentication:

Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

Request format (Layerre create variant):

POST https://api.layerre.com/v1/template/3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6/variant
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "overrides": [
    {
      "layer_id": "11111111-2222-4333-8444-555555555555",
      "properties": { "text": "Summer Sale" }
    },
    {
      "layer_id": "22222222-3333-4444-9555-666666666666",
      "properties": { "img_url": "https://example.com/product.png" }
    }
  ],
  "export_type": "png"
}

Response format:

A variant object includes a signed image URL and dimensions (values are examples):

json
{
  "id": "8b4c5d6e-7f80-90ab-cdef-1234567890ab",
  "template_id": "3fa85f64-5717-4562-b3fc-2c963f66afa6",
  "url": "https://storage.example.com/…/variant.png",
  "width": 1080,
  "height": 1080,
  "overrides": [],
  "created_at": "2026-03-25T12:00:00Z",
  "updated_at": "2026-03-25T12:00:00Z",
  "warnings": []
}

Why REST matters for design automation:

• Works with any programming language (JavaScript, Python, Ruby, PHP, Go, etc.)
• Easy to integrate with existing applications and backends
• Compatible with no-code tools (Zapier, Make, n8n) that speak HTTP
• Well-understood by developers, with no proprietary protocols to learn