Base URL

In the Developer Portal, extensions have a Base URL field. The presence of this field indicates that you must provide Canva with the URL of a web server.

Throughout the lifecycle of the extension, Canva:

• Sends HTTP requests to the web server.
• Uses the responses to determine the extension's behavior.

Handling requests

Unlike some APIs that you may be familiar with—for example, Stripe's Webhooks API—Canva doesn't send all requests to a single endpoint.

Instead, when sending requests, Canva appends a path to the Base URL. (This is why the field is called Base URL and not Endpoint URL.)

The appended path identifies:

• The purpose of the request.
• The structure of the request that Canva sends.
• The structure of the response that Canva expects to receive.

For example, if the Base URL of a publish extension is example.com, Canva may send requests to the following endpoints:

• example.com/publish/resources/find
• example.com/publish/resources/get
• example.com/publish/resources/upload

For each of these endpoints, Canva sends a request that conforms to a schema and expects the responses to conform to a schema of their own.

The documentation for each extension point explains:

• The endpoints an extension needs to support. (This can change depending on the extension's configuration.)
• The structure of the requests that Canva sends to an extension.
• The structure of the responses that an extension must send back to Canva.

You can find this documentation in the sidebar, under the Extension points heading.

Setting up a Base URL

You can use any programming language, framework, or architecture to set up a Base URL, but for Canva to send requests and receive responses, the server must be available via public URL (that is, not localhost).

For examples of how to set up a Base URL, see the following guides:

• Set up a Base URL (with Glitch)
• Set up a Base URL (with ngrok)