Confluence Templates and API

[Hendrik Alexander Dembowsky]

Hello everyone,

I have just started working with Confluence and have some questions about templates, fields and the API. I am currently working on automatically updating the content of some Confluence pages which all have the same structure. Now I have read the following in the Confluence documentation:
"Form fields displayed by the template
If the template author included variables in the template, Confluence will display a form prompting you to supply values for the variables when you add the page."

Now I ask myself firstly how exactly do these variables work, are these fields/variables still available on the created Confluence page? If I have understood the whole thing correctly, the created pages are no longer templates? What is the difference between templates and blueprints? And my most important question is can I address these variables/fields via the API, e.g. I have a confluence page, at the top there is a table and in say the 2nd column there is "example_1". Can I now use a Python script with the api to find out what is in the variable xy on the page with the page id xyz and, if necessary, replace "example_1" with "example_2" via the api, i.e. update the page?

I would also be very happy to receive general tips, especially in connection with the Confluence API.

Many thanks in advance,
Hendrik