Export API

Export API is one of the more obscure utility nodes in WAS Node Suite - a data/output node rather than something that touches your image directly. If you found this page hoping it's an image effect, it isn't; it lives in the "plumbing and output" corner of the suite, the same neighborhood as the save nodes, the logging nodes, and the dictionary/text utilities that make WAS more of a Swiss-army toolbox than a filter pack. Our ecosystem notes describe WAS exactly that way: a large general-purpose toolkit whose job is the utility stuff core ComfyUI doesn't ship.

What it's for

As the name suggests, it's about getting data out of your graph in an API/programmatic-friendly form - exporting information so it can be consumed by something outside the immediate visual workflow, rather than just displayed and forgotten. That's the role it fills: the bridge between a ComfyUI graph and whatever you want to hand the results to next. If you're building an automated or headless pipeline around ComfyUI, an export/serialization node is the kind of glue that connects the graph to the rest of your tooling.

A candid note, because it's the honest thing to do: this is a niche node with very little community write-up, and the specifics of its inputs and outputs aren't documented in the pack's README. Rather than guess at exact field names, treat this as the orientation - it's a utility/output node in the export family - and confirm the precise inputs by dropping it into a graph and reading them off the node itself. That's genuinely the fastest way to pin down any thinly-documented WAS node.

The general WAS-utility mindset

Most utility nodes in this suite follow the same shape: they take some data in, transform or route or emit it, and hand you something to pass along. They're rarely the star - they're the connective tissue that lets the flashy nodes do their thing. Export API sits firmly in that category. If you're reaching for it, you're probably assembling something more elaborate than a single generation, and it's worth knowing the rest of WAS's output and dictionary utilities (the Save nodes, the Text Dictionary family) since they tend to be used together.

Installing it

It comes with WAS Node Suite; you install the whole pack. Easiest is ComfyUI Manager - search was-node-suite-comfyui, install, restart. Or clone it:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/WASasquatch/was-node-suite-comfyui

install its requirements.txt, restart.

Troubleshooting

The thing most likely to go wrong is the pack, not the node. WAS Node Suite has been unmaintained since December 2023 - still widely used, just no active development - and after a ComfyUI update the whole suite can report "Import Failed." That's almost always a dependency-version clash (opencv is the usual offender, since WAS pins an older release). Reinstall requirements.txt into the correct venv (activate it first, or run the bundled install.bat) and the suite, this node included, comes back.