Version 0.3
The Canadiana API and this documentation is still a work in progress. Both should be considered experimental.
Any search query can be turned into a Web service request by appending
the parameter fmt=rdf or fmt=json to retrieve an
RDF document or JSON object, respectively.
To retrieve a specific page of results from the result set, add the page number to the end of the URL. If omitted, the first page is returned:
For general text queries (all bibliographic metadata, abstracts, and
full text) use the q parameter with one or more terms:
Search for phrases by enclosing them in quotes: "". Use * and ? as wildcard characters in the middle or at the end of a work (not phrases). Prefix a term with - to require it not be present (NOT operator). Separate terms with | to match on either term (OR operator):
To limit queries to a particular field, you can either prefix a term with the field name and a colon or use the feld name as a separate query parameter. Mixing and matching is also allowed:
Supported text fields include:
Additionally, the following controlled value fields are supported:
text|image|audio|video|data|plaintext)any|document|series|page|default - default is documents and series)Use the df and dt parameters to limit a
result set to documents published within the given range of years:
Results are sorted by relevance ranking by default. Add the parameter
sort=oldest or sort=newest to sort by
publication date in ascending or descending order.
You can also retrieve individual item records by key:
You can choose to retrieve the full text for the record by adding the
parameter api_text=1. Since some documents might have a very
large amount of text (many megabytes) it is recommended that this option
not be used routinely, but only where the full text is specifically
desired.