APE API documentation
The Archives Portal Europe helps people to search for and retrieve archival descriptions harvested from archival institutons throughout Europe. These services are available as an Application Programming Interface (API) as well. Request and response parameters are provided and delivered in JSON. This enables every programmer to create an (online) user interface for searching in and retrieving of archival descriptions.
We expect readers of this documentation to:
- know how to develop with a RESTful API and JSON
- understand the hierarchical data structures in archival descriptions
- have a notion about the XML-data standard Encoded Archival Description (EAD) 2002
- have a notion about the way data is copied ('harvested') in EAD-format from Collection Management Systems at archival institutions
The services
In the current version (v2.0.0), various services are available. The endpoint of the API is https://api.archivesportaleurope.net/services
Via https://www.archivesportaleurope.net/ApeApi/#!/search/search you can access the ApeApi Explorer were you can try the services and see the responses.
| Description | EAD | EAC-CPF | |
|---|---|---|---|
| search (POST) | Services for searching with a term in the content and filtering on facets | ||
| content (GET) | Services for getting detailed information about a particular result | ||
| download (GET) | Services for downloading XML-files |
| institute (POST / GET) | Services for getting full lists |
Future work
In the current second version the service of searching and retrieving of archival descriptions as provided in the first version has been expanded with more options for detailed viewing of a finding aid as well as searching and retrieving of archive records creators. This new version also offers the possibility to get a list of all archival institutions that have enabled their data-sets for the API, to get a list of available finding aids per institution and the possibility to download these finding aids as raw data (EAD/XML format). We plan to expand these services any further in the near future with more detailed views on archival records and records creators.
API Key
To enable the Archives Portal Europe team to monitor the use of the API, you need to request an API-key to be able to use the API. The API-key can be requested via the option API on the homepage of the portal, or directly via this url: https://www.archivesportaleurope.net/get-api-key.
Note: you need to be a registered user of the Archives Portal Europe to be able to get an API key, so if you don't have an account for the Archives Portal Europe's My Pages functionality yet, please create one first. You can read more on the My Pages functionality over here.
Using the API you need to add a parameter "APIkey" to the header of your request
eg.
'APIkey' : 'put_your_personal_API-key_here'
Versioning
Depending on the version of the API that you want to use, the accept parameter in the header must be set to a specific Content Type. For version 2.0.0 this is: application/vnd.ape-v2+json
eg.
'accept' : 'application/vnd.ape-v2+json'
