Introduction to the JSON documentation

The ResponsiveEmail API accepts JSON objects as input, and turns these objects into responsive emails.

The properties of the email are set in the JSON document. This includes MIME headers, alternate versions and optional email attachments. Of course, the most important properties are the ones that describe what your email should eventually look like: the texts and images that you want to include, and the layout of the email.

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To give you an idea, the following JSON object contains a simple email with just some text:

{
    "subject" : "Example document",
    "text" : "This message will show up for clients which are text only.",
    "from" : {
        "address" : "example@responsiveemail.com",
        "name" : "Example"
    },
    "background" : {
        "color" : "white"
    },
    "content" : {
        "blocks" : [{
            "type" : "text",
            "content" : "This is just an example text block."
        }]
    }
}

Top level properties

As you can probably guess from the first example, there are many different properties, e.g. subject, text, from, that can be set. These objects can even hold arrays and nested data.

Learn more about top level properties

The content property

The structure and design of emails generated with the API is defined inside the property content. Here you can add the blocks that will form your responsive email, based on a 12 columns grid system.

Learn more about the content property

The content block types

Emails generated by the ResponsiveEmail.com API are built with blocks. You can use text blocks for adding textual content, image blocks for images, columns blocks to split your content into multiple responsive columns and many more.

Example

Add an image

{
  "subject" : "Example document",
  "text" : "This message will show up for clients which are text only.",
  "from" : {
    "address" : "example@responsiveemail.com",
    "name" : "Example"
  },
  "content" : {
    "blocks" : [{
      "type" : "image",
      "src"  : "http://placekitten.com/200/140"
      }]
  }
}