API documentation

Getting Started

If you are currently developing a web application and would like to integrate Akismet’s world-class spam protection, you’ve come to the right place. If you are not an application developer and need an API key to activate an existing Akismet plugin or integration, please register here instead.

1. Get a Developer Key

2. Select Integration Type

You can either start from scratch or get up and running quickly with an existing class or library created by other developers.

Plugins & Libraries

People have already begun implementing Akismet for other systems and platforms; here are the ones we know about:

WordPress

• Official WordPress Plugin (Comments)
• Jetpack (Contact Form)
• Contact Form 7 (Contact Form)
• Gravity Forms (Contact Form)
• Ninja Forms

Content Management Systems

• Drupal AntiSpam Module (Drupal)
• ZOO (Joomla)
• R Antispam (Joomla)
• Spamshield (TYPO3)
• Antispam (Perch)
• AkismetKlik (Mediawiki)
• MediaWiki-Akismet (Mediawiki)
• Advanced Spam Cleaner (Moodle)
• Exkismet (Elixir)
• Comments Module (Sitefinity)

Forums

• discourse-akismet (Discourse)
• Spam-o-mattic (vBulletin)
• Akismet Spam Protection (SMF)
• Akismet (Vanilla)
• Akismet Anti-Spam Extension (phpBB)
• talk-plugin-akismet (Mozilla Talk)

E-Commerce

• Spam Killer (Magento)
• Ask it! (Magento)
• Stop Spam (Open Cart)

Other

• drAkismetPlugin (Symfony)
• Serendiptity spam protection includes Akismet
• Jahia Spam Filtering Plugin
• tDiary (Japanese)
• Piwigo
• Bigace
• Akismet Plugin for PHPList3
• Akismet for FormAssembly

Libraries

• Dart: Dart Connector for Akismet
• JavaScript: Node.js bindings to the Akismet API
• JavaScript: akismet-js: Prevent comment spam using JavaScript
• Perl: Net::Akismet Perl module on CPAN
• PHP: Laraval 4 framework
• PHP: Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware
• PHP: PHP 4 class by Bret Kuhns
• PHP: Fuspam PHP function
• Python: python-akismet
• Python: Voidspace Python module
• Python: pykismet3: Python 3 Akismet client (used by Django forms)
• Ruby: RubyGem: Rakismet
• Ruby: RubyGem: Akismet (unofficial)
• Go: go-akismet

Building your Application

If you choose to write your own integration, there are a few things that you’ll want to keep in mind:

Development API keys

If you’d like access to a development API key, please join our developer program. Even if you are using an available library but want to test our service before committing to a subscription, we can get you up and running.

Structuring your API calls

All calls to Akismet are POST requests much like a web form would send. The request variables should be constructed like a query string: key=value and multiple variables separated by ampersands. Don’t forget to URL encode the values.

When making calls to Akismet, your key is used as a subdomain. So, if you had the key 123YourAPIKey, you would make all API calls to https://123YourAPIKey.rest.akismet.com.

There are three different types of calls to Akismet:

1. Key verification will verify whether or not a valid API key is being used. This is especially useful if you will have multiple users with their own Akismet subscriptions using your application.
2. Comment check is used to ask Akismet whether or not a given post, comment, profile, etc. is spam.
3. Submit Spam and Submit Ham are follow-ups to let Akismet know when it got something wrong (missed spam and false positives). These are very important, and you shouldn’t develop using the Akismet API without a facility to include reporting missed spam and false positives.

Testing your API calls

Akismet works by examining all the available information combined. It is not enough to provide just the content of a message; you need to provide as many independent pieces of information as you can in each call. So before you can test Akismet’s accuracy, you need to make sure you’re sending complete and correct information.

To simulate a positive (spam) result, make a comment-check API call with the comment_author set to viagra-test-123 or comment_author_email set to akismet-guaranteed-spam@example.com. Populate all other required fields with typical values. The Akismet API will always return a true response to a valid request with one of those values. If you receive anything else, something is wrong in your client, data, or communications.

To simulate a negative (not spam) result, make a comment-check API call with the user_role set to administrator and all other required fields populated with typical values. The Akismet API will always return a false response. Any other response indicates a data or communication problem.

Also, make sure your client will handle an unexpected response. Don’t assume that the comment-check API will always return either true or false. An invalid request may result in an error response; additional information will usually be available in HTTP headers. And of course, a connectivity problem may result in no response at all. It’s important not to misinterpret an invalid response as meaning spam or ham.

For automated testing, include the parameter is_test=1 in your tests. That will tell Akismet not to change its behaviour based on those API calls – they will have no training effect. That means your tests will be somewhat repeatable, in the sense that one test won’t influence subsequent calls.

Setting your user agent

If possible, your user agent string should always use the following format:

The Akismet WordPress plugin’s user agent string would look like:

Key verification

Key verification authenticates your key before calling the comment check, submit spam, or submit ham methods. This is the first call that you should make to Akismet and is especially useful if you will have multiple users with their own Akismet subscriptions using your application.

This method is called a POST request to the following URL:

This is the one call that can be made without the API key subdomain. The API key should be included as the key POST parameter.

Required parameters

PHP Example

    // Call to verify key function
    akismet_verify_key('123YourAPIKey', 'http://www.yourblogdomainname.com/');
    // Authenticates your Akismet API key
    function akismet_verify_key( $key, $blog ) {
    $blog = urlencode($blog);
    $request = 'key='. $key .'&blog='. $blog;
    $host = $http_host = 'rest.akismet.com';
    $path = '/1.1/verify-key';
    $port = 443;
    $akismet_ua = "WordPress/4.4.1 | Akismet/3.1.7";
    $content_length = strlen( $request );
    $http_request  = "POST $path HTTP/1.0\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Host: $host\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Content-Length: {$content_length}\r\n";
    $http_request .= "User-Agent: {$akismet_ua}\r\n";
    $http_request .= "\r\n";
    $http_request .= $request;
    $response = '';
    if( false != ( $fs = @fsockopen( 'ssl://' . $http_host, $port, $errno, $errstr, 10 ) ) ) {
    	
    	fwrite( $fs, $http_request );

    	while ( !feof( $fs ) )
    		$response .= fgets( $fs, 1160 ); // One TCP-IP packet
    	fclose( $fs );
    	
    	$response = explode( "\r\n\r\n", $response, 2 );
    }

    if ( 'valid' == $response[1] )
    	return true;
    else
    	return false;
    }
                        

Success response example

The call returns valid if the key is valid.

    Array
    (
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: nginx
    Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 16:31:55 GMT
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
    Connection: close
    Content-length: 5
    [1] => valid
    )
                        

Error response example

If the verify-key call returns “invalid”, it usually includes an extra HTTP header with some debug information about what exactly was invalid about the call.

    Array
    (
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: nginx
    Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 16:34:54 GMT
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
    Connection: close
    X-akismet-debug-help: We were unable to parse your blog URI
    Content-length: 7
    [1] => invalid
    )
                        

We’re here to help

If you ever get stuck or need help troubleshooting something, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Comment check

This is the call you will make the most. It takes a number of arguments and characteristics about the submitted content and then returns a thumbs up or thumbs down. Performance can drop dramatically if you choose to exclude data points. The more data you send Akismet about each comment, the greater the accuracy. We recommend erring on the side of including too much data.

This method is called with the following URL:

Parameters

Other server environmental variables
In PHP, there is an array of environmental variables called $_SERVER that contains information about the Web server itself as well as a key/value for every HTTP header sent with the request. This data is highly useful to Akismet. How the submitted content interacts with the server can be very telling, so please include as much of it as possible.

PHP Example

    // Call to comment check
    $data = array('blog' => 'http://yourblogdomainname.com',
    		  'user_ip' => '127.0.0.1',
    		  'user_agent' => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6',
    		  'referrer' => 'http://www.google.com',
    		  'permalink' => 'http://yourblogdomainname.com/blog/post=1',
    		  'comment_type' => 'comment',
    		  'comment_author' => 'admin',
    		  'comment_author_email' => 'test@test.com',
    		  'comment_author_url' => 'http://www.CheckOutMyCoolSite.com',
    		  'comment_content' => 'It means a lot that you would take the time to review our software.  Thanks again.');
    akismet_comment_check( '123YourAPIKey', $data );
    // Passes back true (it's spam) or false (it's ham)
    function akismet_comment_check( $key, $data ) {
    $request = 'blog='. urlencode($data['blog']) .
    		   '&user_ip='. urlencode($data['user_ip']) .
    		   '&user_agent='. urlencode($data['user_agent']) .
    		   '&referrer='. urlencode($data['referrer']) .
    		   '&permalink='. urlencode($data['permalink']) .
    		   '&comment_type='. urlencode($data['comment_type']) .
    		   '&comment_author='. urlencode($data['comment_author']) .
    		   '&comment_author_email='. urlencode($data['comment_author_email']) .
    		   '&comment_author_url='. urlencode($data['comment_author_url']) .
    		   '&comment_content='. urlencode($data['comment_content']);
    $host = $http_host = $key.'.rest.akismet.com';
    $path = '/1.1/comment-check';
    $port = 443;
    $akismet_ua = "WordPress/4.4.1 | Akismet/3.1.7";
    $content_length = strlen( $request );
    $http_request  = "POST $path HTTP/1.0\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Host: $host\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Content-Length: {$content_length}\r\n";
    $http_request .= "User-Agent: {$akismet_ua}\r\n";
    $http_request .= "\r\n";
    $http_request .= $request;
    $response = '';
    if( false != ( $fs = @fsockopen( 'ssl://' . $http_host, $port, $errno, $errstr, 10 ) ) ) {
    	
    	fwrite( $fs, $http_request );

    	while ( !feof( $fs ) )
    		$response .= fgets( $fs, 1160 ); // One TCP-IP packet
    	fclose( $fs );
    	
    	$response = explode( "\r\n\r\n", $response, 2 );
    }

    if ( 'true' == $response[1] )
    	return true;
    else
    	return false;
    }
                        

This call returns either “true” (if this is spam) or “false” if it’s not.

Spam response example

The call returns “true” if the comment is spam. If you are having trouble triggering a spam response, you can send “viagra-test-123” as the author or “akismet-guaranteed-spam@example.com” as the author email. Either value will always trigger a “true” response.

    Array
    (
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: nginx
    Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 20:17:08 GMT
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
    Connection: close
    Content-length: 4
    [1] => true
    )
                        

A spam response may also include the X-akismet-pro-tip header, like so:

    Array
    (
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: nginx
    Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 20:17:08 GMT
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
    Connection: close
    X-akismet-pro-tip: discard
    Content-length: 4
    [1] => true
    )
                        

If the X-akismet-pro-tip header is set to discard, then Akismet has determined that the comment is blatant spam, and you can safely discard it without saving it in any spam queue. Read more about this feature in this Akismet blog post.

Ham response example

The call returns “false” if the comment is ham. If you are having trouble triggering a ham response, you can set “user_role” to “administrator” and set the “is_test” parameter to “true”, and it will always trigger a “false” response.

    Array
    (
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: nginx
    Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 20:17:08 GMT
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
    Connection: close
    Content-length: 4
    [1] => false
    )
                        

Error response example

If the call returns neither true nor false, the X-akismet-debug-help header will provide context for any error that has occurred. Note that the X-akismet-debug-help header will not always be sent if a response does not return false or true.

    Array
    (
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: nginx
    Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 16:34:54 GMT
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
    Connection: close
    X-akismet-debug-help: We were unable to parse your blog URI
    Content-length: 7
    [1] => invalid
    )
                        

Testing your data

It is important to test Akismet with a significant amount of real, live data in order to draw any conclusions on accuracy. Akismet works by comparing content to genuine spam activity happening right now (and this is based on more than just the content itself), so artificially generating spam comments is not a viable approach.

We’re here to help

If you ever get stuck or need help troubleshooting something, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Submit spam (missed spam)

This call is for submitting comments that weren’t marked as spam but should have been.

It is very important that the values you submit with this call match those of your comment-check calls as closely as possible. In order to learn from its mistakes, Akismet needs to match your missed spam and false positive reports to the original comment-check API calls made when the content was first posted. While it is normal for less information to be available for submit-spam and submit-ham calls (most comment systems and forums will not store all metadata), you should ensure that the values that you do send match those of the original content.

This method is called with the following URL:

This call takes the same arguments as the comment check call.

Parameters

Other server environmental variables
In PHP, there is an array of environmental variables called $_SERVER that contains information about the Web server itself as well as a key/value for every HTTP header sent with the request. This data is highly useful to Akismet. How the submitted content interacts with the server can be very telling, so please include as much of it as possible.

PHP Example

    // Call to comment check
    $data = array('blog' => 'http://yourblogdomainname.com',
    		  'user_ip' => '127.0.0.1',
    		  'user_agent' => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6',
    		  'referrer' => 'http://www.google.com',
    		  'permalink' => 'http://yourblogdomainname.com/blog/post=1',
    		  'comment_type' => 'comment',
    		  'comment_author' => 'admin',
    		  'comment_author_email' => 'test@test.com',
    		  'comment_author_url' => 'http://www.CheckOutMyCoolSite.com',
    		  'comment_content' => 'It means a lot that you would take the time to review our software.  Thanks again.');
    akismet_submit_spam( '123YourAPIKey', $data );
    // Passes back true (it's spam) or false (it's ham)
    function akismet_submit_spam( $key, $data ) {
    $request = 'blog='. urlencode($data['blog']) .
    		   '&user_ip='. urlencode($data['user_ip']) .
    		   '&user_agent='. urlencode($data['user_agent']) .
    		   '&referrer='. urlencode($data['referrer']) .
    		   '&permalink='. urlencode($data['permalink']) .
    		   '&comment_type='. urlencode($data['comment_type']) .
    		   '&comment_author='. urlencode($data['comment_author']) .
    		   '&comment_author_email='. urlencode($data['comment_author_email']) .
    		   '&comment_author_url='. urlencode($data['comment_author_url']) .
    		   '&comment_content='. urlencode($data['comment_content']);
    $host = $http_host = $key.'.rest.akismet.com';
    $path = '/1.1/submit-spam';
    $port = 443;
    $akismet_ua = "WordPress/4.4.1 | Akismet/3.1.7";
    $content_length = strlen( $request );
    $http_request  = "POST $path HTTP/1.0\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Host: $host\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Content-Length: {$content_length}\r\n";
    $http_request .= "User-Agent: {$akismet_ua}\r\n";
    $http_request .= "\r\n";
    $http_request .= $request;
    $response = '';
    if( false != ( $fs = @fsockopen( 'ssl://' . $http_host, $port, $errno, $errstr, 10 ) ) ) {
    	
    	fwrite( $fs, $http_request );

    	while ( !feof( $fs ) )
    		$response .= fgets( $fs, 1160 ); // One TCP-IP packet
    	fclose( $fs );
    	
    	$response = explode( "\r\n\r\n", $response, 2 );
    }

    if ( 'Thanks for making the web a better place.' == $response[1] )
    	return true;
    else
    	return false;
    }
                        

This call returns a single response:

    Array
    (
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: nginx
    Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 20:41:15 GMT
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
    Connection: close
    Content-length: 41
    [1] => Thanks for making the web a better place.
    )
                        

We’re here to help

If you ever get stuck or need help troubleshooting something, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Submit ham (false positives)

This call is intended for the submission of false positives - items that were incorrectly classified as spam by Akismet. It takes identical arguments as comment check and submit spam.

Remember that, as explained in our submit-spam documentation, you should ensure that any values you’re passing here match up with the original and corresponding comment-check call.

This method is called with the following URL:

This call takes the same arguments as the comment check call.

Parameters

Other server environmental variables
In PHP, there is an array of environmental variables called $_SERVER that contains information about the Web server itself as well as a key/value for every HTTP header sent with the request. This data is highly useful to Akismet. How the submitted content interacts with the server can be very telling, so please include as much of it as possible.

PHP Example

    // Call to comment check
    $data = array('blog' => 'http://yourblogdomainname.com',
    		  'user_ip' => '127.0.0.1',
    		  'user_agent' => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6',
    		  'referrer' => 'http://www.google.com',
    		  'permalink' => 'http://yourblogdomainname.com/blog/post=1',
    		  'comment_type' => 'comment',
    		  'comment_author' => 'admin',
    		  'comment_author_email' => 'test@test.com',
    		  'comment_author_url' => 'http://www.CheckOutMyCoolSite.com',
    		  'comment_content' => 'It means a lot that you would take the time to review our software.  Thanks again.');
    akismet_submit_ham( '123YourAPIKey', $data );
    // Passes back true (it's spam) or false (it's ham)
    function akismet_submit_ham( $key, $data ) {
    $request = 'blog='. urlencode($data['blog']) .
    		   '&user_ip='. urlencode($data['user_ip']) .
    		   '&user_agent='. urlencode($data['user_agent']) .
    		   '&referrer='. urlencode($data['referrer']) .
    		   '&permalink='. urlencode($data['permalink']) .
    		   '&comment_type='. urlencode($data['comment_type']) .
    		   '&comment_author='. urlencode($data['comment_author']) .
    		   '&comment_author_email='. urlencode($data['comment_author_email']) .
    		   '&comment_author_url='. urlencode($data['comment_author_url']) .
    		   '&comment_content='. urlencode($data['comment_content']);
    $host = $http_host = $key.'.rest.akismet.com';
    $path = '/1.1/submit-ham';
    $port = 443;
    $akismet_ua = "WordPress/4.4.1 | Akismet/3.1.7";
    $content_length = strlen( $request );
    $http_request  = "POST $path HTTP/1.0\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Host: $host\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
    $http_request .= "Content-Length: {$content_length}\r\n";
    $http_request .= "User-Agent: {$akismet_ua}\r\n";
    $http_request .= "\r\n";
    $http_request .= $request;
    $response = '';
    if( false != ( $fs = @fsockopen( 'ssl://' . $http_host, $port, $errno, $errstr, 10 ) ) ) {
    	
    	fwrite( $fs, $http_request );

    	while ( !feof( $fs ) )
    		$response .= fgets( $fs, 1160 ); // One TCP-IP packet
    	fclose( $fs );
    	
    	$response = explode( "\r\n\r\n", $response, 2 );
    }

    if ( 'Thanks for making the web a better place.' == $response[1] )
    	return true;
    else
    	return false;
    }
                        

This call returns a single response:

    Array
    (
    [0] => HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Server: nginx
    Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 20:41:15 GMT
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
    Connection: close
    Content-length: 41
    [1] => Thanks for making the web a better place.
    )
                        

We’re here to help

If you ever get stuck or need help troubleshooting something, please don’t hesitate to contact us.