StackExchange API

Overview

Measurement Record

What actually happened when we called this API from our own infrastructure. Every value below was recorded by the request, not copied from the provider's documentation.

Request

GET https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions?order=desc&sort=activity&site=stackoverflow&tagged=javascript&pagesize=5

Result

HTTP 200 · application/json · 3,758 bytes · compressed

Response time

289 ms (median of 3) · fastest 204 ms

Transport

TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 · certificate issued by Let's Encrypt

Browser CORS

Allowed — Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

Served by

cloudflare

Recorded

2026-08-10

Fields Returned

Top-level fields present in the response we captured, with the type and value we actually received.

Captured Response

Captured from a real request to https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions?order=desc&sort=activity&site=stackoverflow&tagged=javascript&pagesize=5 on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.

{
  "items": [
    {
      "tags": [
        "javascript"
      ],
      "owner": {
        "…": "(7 more fields)"
      },
      "is_answered": false,
      "view_count": 19,
      "answer_count": 0,
      "score": 0,
      "last_activity_date": 1786391348,
      "creation_date": 1786388661,
      "last_edit_date": 1786391348,
      "question_id": 79992026,
      "content_license": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
      "link": "https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79992026/how-do-i-export-a-javascript-project-from-dashtera-platform",
      "title": "How do I export a JavaScript project from Dashtera platform?"
    }
  ],
  "has_more": true,
  "quota_max": 300,
  "quota_remaining": 294
}

Implementation Example

Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.

const url = "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions?order=desc&sort=activity&site=stackoverflow&tagged=javascript&pagesize=5";
// Replace headers or query params with the values required by this API.
const response = await fetch(url, {
  headers: {
  "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
  }
});
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

import requests

url = "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions?order=desc&sort=activity&site=stackoverflow&tagged=javascript&pagesize=5"
headers = {"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, timeout=30)
response.raise_for_status()
data = response.json()
print(data)

curl "https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3/questions?order=desc&sort=activity&site=stackoverflow&tagged=javascript&pagesize=5"

What Can You Build?

// Get repository or project information
const headers = { 'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN' };
const response = await fetch(`https://api.stackexchange.com`, { headers });
const data = await response.json();
console.log('Project info:', data);
const info = data.repository || data;
console.log('Name:', info.name || info.full_name);
console.log('Stars:', info.stars || info.stargazers_count || 'N/A');

// Fetch developer resources
const headers = { 'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN' };
const response = await fetch(`https://api.stackexchange.com`, { headers });
const data = await response.json();
const items = Array.isArray(data) ? data : data.results || data.items || [data];
items.slice(0, 5).forEach(item => {
  console.log(`📦 ${item.name || item.title}: ${item.description || 'No description'}`);
});

// Search for development resources
const headers = { 'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN' };
const query = 'javascript';
const response = await fetch(`https://api.stackexchange.com`, { headers });
const data = await response.json();
const results = data.items || data.results || [];
results.slice(0, 5).forEach(r => {
  console.log(`Result: ${r.name || r.title} - ${r.url || r.html_url || ''}`);
});

Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.

How This API Fails

We deliberately sent this API a broken request and recorded exactly what came back on 2026-08-10. Knowing the shape of an error before you hit it makes error handling much easier to write.

{
  "error_id": 404,
  "error_message": "no method found with this name",
  "error_name": "no_method"
}

{
  "error_id": 400,
  "error_message": "order",
  "error_name": "bad_parameter"
}

Common Errors & Troubleshooting

Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.