Cefas Data Hub - APIs

All metadata records and published datasets which are published on the Cefas Data Portal (https://data.cefas.co.uk/) are available to access directly using our Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).  These can be used as live links to view, download and query data and metadata and are typically used by developers or data scientists working with coding software.

Our APIs are fully documented via https://data-api.cefas.co.uk/index.html

 

Commonly Used Terms

API Term	Description
Holding	a single metadata record
Recordset	a single dataset
Holding Id	an internal unique reference number for a metadata record
Medin Id	a unique Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) mainly used in external references to a specific metadata record
Recordset Id	an internal unique reference number for a specific dataset

 

Common Parameters and How to Access Them

Holding Ids for metadata records are included as the first field of the landing page on our data portal and are also the final part of web address.  

e.g. https://data.cefas.co.uk/view/945 

Recordset Ids for individual datasets are listed next to the dataset title under the data tab of a metadata record. 

e.g.

 

Examples

Some simple examples of API use are given below, the elements in bold should be changed to the those desired for the given Holding / Recordset.

 

How to list all recordsets for a given metadata record:

Parameters needed = Holding Id

URL version: https://data-api.cefas.co.uk/api/holdings/945/recordsets

Curl version: curl -X GET "https://data-api.cefas.co.uk/api/holdings/945/recordsets" -H  "accept: application/json"

 

How to fetch a specified recordset (can be used as a live link):

Parameters needed = Recordset Id, Number of pages desired, results per page desired 

URL version: https://data-api.cefas.co.uk/api/recordsets/3283/data?page=1&resultsPerPage=100000

Curl version: curl -X GET "https://data-api.cefas.co.uk/api/recordsets/3283/data?page=1&resultsPerPage=100000" -H  "accept: application/json"

 

How to download a recordset (only csv format supported currently)

Parameters needed = Recordset Id

URL version: https://data-api.cefas.co.uk/api/export/3283?format=csv

Curl version: curl -X GET "https://data-api.cefas.co.uk/api/export/3283?format=csv" -H  "accept: application/json"

 

Data Use Conditions

All data are available under the terms of the UK Open Government Licence http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ 

 

For specific queries and particular datasets, please contact us at data.manager@cefas.co.uk