Intro to web APIs in Shortcuts on iPhone or iPad
You can take your shortcuts to another level by taking advantage of the power of web APIs (application programming interfaces).
Although most Shortcuts actions fill potential gaps between apps, you may find a gap between one of your apps and the web service that powers that app. For example, you may want to retrieve and work with more raw data than an app discloses. Or you may want to automate saving or posting of information to a service (or perhaps a service doesn’t offer a mobile app but does offer an API). In such cases (and many more), you can use Shortcuts to perform an API request.
The following two sections, “Get started with web APIs” and “Work with JSON,” discuss obtaining and modifying a Typicode API to build a shortcut that creates contacts from an API request.