This is not currently the default version of the API. Include the Zotero-API-Version: 3 HTTP header or the v=3 query parameter to access this version.

The Zotero Web API allows items to be created manually, but it can also automatically create items from uploaded URLs, similar to the one-click saving from web pages offered in the Zotero client. The server takes care of downloading the page, extracting metadata using Zotero translators, and creating a new item in the library.

An API key with write access to a given library is necessary to use write methods.

This feature is not meant as a general-purpose tool for extracting metadata from web pages. If you're only interested in extracting metadata from web pages — for example, for integration into another project — rather than saving items to a Zotero library, you should install Zotero's translation-server, a server-side version of Zotero's translation framework, on your own server. To prevent abuse, use of web translation may be rate limited to a greater extent than other API requests.

POST /users/1/items

{
  "url": "http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0838985890/"
}

If only a single item is found for the given URL, the item will be saved to the library with a 200 OK response:

{
  "success": {
    "0": "C6SA6U3W"
  },
  "unchanged": {},
  "failed": {}
}

POST /users/1/items

{
  "url": "http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=test"
}

If multiple items are found for the URL, the API will return 300 Multiple Choices:

{
  "url": "http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=test",
  "token": "085f1b8341ea4c221320de18d6f4e3c6",
  "items": {
    "0":"Reproductive Tradeoffs In Uncertain Environments: Explaining The Evolution Of Cultural Elaboration",
    "1":"Dynamics of clade diversification on the morphological hypercube",
    "2":"The Clustering of High Redshift Galaxies in the Cold Dark Matter Scenario",
    "3":"Recovering the Primordial Density Fluctuations: A comparison of methods",
    "4":"Reconstruction Analysis of Galaxy Redshift Surveys: A Hybrid Reconstruction Method",
    "5":"On-line determination of stellar atmospheric parameters Teff, log g, [Fe/H] from ELODIE echelle spectra. I - The method",
    "6":"Limits on the star formation rates of z>2 damped Ly-alpha systems from H-alpha spectroscopy",
    "7":"Unambiguous quasar microlensing",
    "8":"Does the AGN Continuum Shape Change with Luminosity?",
    "9":"Testing the Relation Between the Local and Cosmic Star Formation Histories",
    "10":"Supernova pencil beam survey"
  }
}

Delete the unwanted entries from the items array in the returned JSON and reupload the JSON, making sure existing keys aren't changed.

POST /users/1/items

{
  "url": "http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=test",
  "token": "085f1b8341ea4c221320de18d6f4e3c6",
  "items": {
    "1":"Dynamics of clade diversification on the morphological hypercube",
    "2":"The Clustering of High Redshift Galaxies in the Cold Dark Matter Scenario",
    "7":"Unambiguous quasar microlensing"
  }
}

200 OK response:

{
  "success": {
    "1": "A7NC29DW",
    "2": "NPN2K5ZA",
    "7": "CPWS7BVK"
  },
  "unchanged": {},
  "failed": {}
}