Requests

GET: query parameters text, q, or message (first match wins). Encode reserved characters in the query string (for example space as %20).

POST: If Content-Type includes application/json, the body must be a JSON object with text, message, or q (string). Otherwise the entire body is read as raw text (useful for text/plain). Max length 50,000 characters for the extracted string in all cases.

Examples

Same path works for v1 and v2; swap /api/v1/detect or /api/v2/detect.

GET /api/v1/detect?q=こんにちは
Authorization: Bearer <workspace_api_key>

POST /api/v1/detect
Authorization: Bearer <workspace_api_key>
Content-Type: application/json

{"message": "Mixed input你好 hello"}

POST /api/v1/detect
Authorization: Bearer <workspace_api_key>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Plain body text with no JSON wrapper.

SDK-ready snippets

// JavaScript / TypeScript
async function detect(text) {
  const res = await fetch("https://sift.nu/api/v2/detect", {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      Authorization: "Bearer " + process.env.SIFT_API_KEY,
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({ text }),
  });
  if (!res.ok) throw new Error(await res.text());
  return res.json();
}

# Python
import os, requests

def detect(text: str):
    r = requests.post(
        "https://sift.nu/api/v1/detect",
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SIFT_API_KEY']}"},
        json={"text": text},
        timeout=10,
    )
    r.raise_for_status()
    return r.json()

Input edge cases

• Missing text returns 400 with guidance for GET query and POST JSON formats.
• On v2, whitespace-only text returns 400 with Text is empty.
• Text longer than 50,000 characters returns 413.