Access sharepoint list from web site hosted externally from sharepoint

Access sharepoint list from web site hosted externally from sharepoint

I'm developing a web application externally from sharepoint online 2010.
As part of the application I would like to allow users to access documents
from a document library. Ideally users would click on an option, this
would query the library for documents, and return a JSON object for each
object satisfying the query for display as links in a webpage.
I've been looking for a way to do this in a website hosted externally from
sharepoint 2010, but I have been unable to find resources describing how
to load the ECMA script API and connect to a sharepoint site. Does anyone
know where I can find this information?
Thank you for your help!