Node API
The celestia-node API is made for interacting with celestia-node. There are two ways in which a user and developer can interact with the API, the RPC API and the Gateway API. View the API's documentation.
RPC API
The RPC API primarily focuses on developers and projects building on top of Celestia, who are willing to run their own DA nodes. The RPC API provides a richer set of features and a superior user experience. Unlike the Gateway API, the RPC API allows access to the internal wallet and keyring of the DA node, as well as other sensitive and administrative capabilities.
Library
The node can be used as a Golang library and designed for programmatic API access.
RPC
The RPC API is also exposed to OpenRPC(JSON-RPC 2.0) for users wanting to run their DA node as a separate DA service. It provides the same set of features as the library with an additional authentication system with different permissions levels to protect the wallet and signing + providing RPC-level DOS protection.
RPC API tutorial
The node tutorial, which uses the RPC CLI, is the recommended way to get started interacting with your Celestia node.
Gateway API
WARNING
The gateway endpoints have been deprecated and will be removed in the future. If you would like to use them anyway, you can find more details on GitHub.
The gateway API is a REST API which is meant to be deployed by infra providers to enable the public read-only gateway to the DA network for external users who don't want or can't run light nodes (like browsers currently) over HTTP. It has no wallet or signing functionality.
Gateway API tutorial
Check out the Prompt scavenger gateway API tutorial for more details.