Vimeo provides developer tools for a wide range of use cases and implementations. Developer tools come in three flavors: the Vimeo API, oEmbed, and the Player SDK.
In this article:
The Vimeo API
The Vimeo API is a powerful toolset that lets developers deeply integrate Vimeo into their apps and services. To get started with the API, you’ll need to create an API app and an authentication token. Visit our Developer Site for technical guides and reference documentation to help you get started.
To find out if a specific on-site action can be performed using the API, take a look at the API Reference page. From there, click the specific feature in the left-hand navigation column (Showcases, Folders, etc.), and click through to see the feature's endpoint documentation (Add videos to a Showcase, Get videos in a Folder, etc.)
In general, the Vimeo API can only perform actions that can be done manually on the vimeo.com website.
oEmbed
If you want to programmatically retrieve the Vimeo Player embed code, developers can get that embed code and related metadata using oEmbed. Using oEmbed makes it easy for developers to get an embed code with the exact dimensions, parameters, and preferences that they need. Documentation for our oEmbed implementation is also found on the Developer Site.
Player SDK
Developers who want to control and interact with an embedded Vimeo Player can do so with our Javascript Player SDK. With the Player SDK, developers can listen for events that occur within the Player, programmatically control the Player, and much more. Full documentation and references can be found on the Developer Site. Want to dive deeper? The source code is also available on GitHub.