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This repository contains the code for VertNet's APIs.
The VertNet Web API is accessed using HTTP and is located at the domain api-module.vertnet-portal.appspot.com. All API requests are sent as JSON objects.
Currently, the APIs are implemented as an independent services within the VertNet platform. They can be accessed via this base URL:
http://api-module.vertnet-portal.appspot.com/api/{version}/{method}
NOTE: Even though the URL api.vertnet-portal.appspot.com is available, it points to an outdated version of the APIs. We will eventually remove that old version and make the new APIs available via that URL.
The following API methods are currently available:
| Method | Latest version | Documentation |
|---|---|---|
search |
v1 |
https://github.com/VertNet/api/wiki/Search-API |
download |
v1 |
https://github.com/VertNet/api/wiki/Download-API |
If your goal is to search for and retrieve VertNet data, you will want to use either the search or download API methods. These two methods have a common interface for specifying queries, but the ways in which they return their results are quite different.
The search method returns its results as soon as they are available by wrapping matching VertNet records inside a JSON response object. Thus, calls to the search method are "blocking" in the sense that a response is not returned until the first records matching the search query have been retrieved.
In contrast, calls to the download method return immediately without sending any VertNet data records back to the client. Instead, download API calls must include an email address that will be contacted once the search is complete. The entire result set is assembled as a tab-delimited text file and a download link is provided in the email.
For programmatic access to VertNet data and immediate manipulation of search results, the API search method will usually be the best choice. On the other hand, bulk downloading of large sets of VertNet records for later use is best accomplished with the API download method.
See this wiki page for information on how to contribute to the development of the APIs:
https://github.com/VertNet/portal-web/wiki/Development
- Vertnet web portal: https://github.com/VertNet/portal-web
- Harvesting: https://github.com/VertNet/gulo
- Indexing: https://github.com/VertNet/dwc-indexer
- Toolkit: https://github.com/VertNet/toolkit
- Georeferencing calculator: https://github.com/VertNet/georefcalculator
- Geospatial Quality API: https://github.com/VertNet/api-geospatial
- Usage Statistics Generation: https://github.com/VertNet/usagestats
- BigQuery: https://github.com/VertNet/bigquery
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see here.