A first place to begin is Scalar’s API Explorer. This simple interactive tool allows you to select options to generate API query URLs and see the results.

If you wish to access the API directly (e.g., via Javascript), data is accessed via the same URLs that are constructed in the API Explorer. User's Guide pages on query scope and GET variables explain the full list of available URL parameters in detail.

There are two main ways to access the API from a remote server. First, you can proxy the data via a PHP file on your server (which sidesteps cross-site scripting restrictions) in either RDF-XML or RDF-JSON. Alternatively, you can access the API directly using JSONP (a JSON wrapper that facilitates remote calls that is supported by frameworks such as jQuery). For example, this call will return all content nodes in the Scalar Guide, formatted in JSONP with the “abcdef123456″ callback:

http://scalar.usc.edu/works/guide/rdf/instancesof/content?format=json&callback=abcdef123456