API reference

This section is the endpoint reference for CairnCMS. Every collection, system or user-defined, has REST and GraphQL surfaces generated from the running schema, plus a small set of operator-side endpoints (/schema/*, /config/*, /server/*, /utils/*) that are not collection-shaped. The pages here cover the conventions, the per-collection specifics, and the SDK that wraps them.

For running a CairnCMS deployment, see Manage. For building applications and extensions, see Develop.

Pages in this section

• Introduction — the API’s overall shape: REST and GraphQL roots, the response envelope, the system-versus-user split, and the global error codes.
• Authentication — token types, login and refresh flows, SSO providers, two-factor authentication, and how to attach credentials to requests.
• Items — read, create, update, and delete items in user-defined collections, including batch and query-based variants and relational writes.
• Files — upload, manage, and serve assets through /files (metadata) and /assets (bytes, with on-the-fly image transforms).
• Filters and queries — the query DSL shared by REST and GraphQL: field selection, filtering, sorting, pagination, aggregation, deep queries.
• GraphQL — the two GraphQL endpoints, the request format, schema introspection, and the surfaces that are intentionally REST-only.
• SDK — @cairncms/sdk, the official JavaScript client. Composition pattern, REST and GraphQL composables, authentication, and schema-typed queries.
• System collections — the platform-owned directus_* tables and the operator endpoints that pair with them. Split into seven topical pages plus a hub.

Where to go after this section

• Manage — the operator-facing reference for the surfaces these endpoints wrap.
• Develop — building applications and extensions on top of these endpoints.
• Filters and queries and Items — the two pages that anchor most day-to-day API usage.