In this section you will find all information necessary to jump-start using Europeana API.

Request

Every Europeana Search API call is an HTTP request in a specified format that is sent to the Europeana API service. The API root URL is located at:

http://www.europeana.eu/api/v2

For obligatory request parameters look into the documentation of specific calls. The authentication section provides information on the obligatory authentication parameter wskey.

Response

A response to an API call will always contain a number of standard fields that precede the fields specific for the call. The standard part contains the following fields:

Field	Datatype	Description
apikey	String	the authentication parameter sent out by the client (the wskey parameter)
action	String	the name of the API method that was called
success	Boolean	a boolean (true/false) flag denoting the successful execution of the call
statsDuration	Number	the time (in milliseconds) taken to serve the request
requestNumber	Number	a positive number denoting the number of request by this API key within the last 24 hours
error	String	if the call was not successful this fields will contain a detailed text message. See Error Codes for more information.
params	Object	original request parameters. If an invalid request parameter was submitted, this response parameter will contain the default value (see individual calls for the default values). Shown up only if the profile parameter contains “params”.

Datatypes

Europeana API uses the following datatypes:

Datatype	Description
Number	integer or double precision floating-point number
String	double-quoted Unicode, with backslash escaping
Boolean	true or false
Array	an ordered sequence of values, comma-separated and enclosed in square brackets; the values do not need to be of the same type
Array([Datatype])	an ordered sequence values of Datatype (e.g. String or Object), comma-separated and enclosed in square brackets
Object	an unordered collection of key:value pairs with the ‘:’ character separating the key and the value, comma-separated and enclosed in curly braces; the keys must be strings and should be distinct from each other
LangMap	TBD

Error Codes

An error during processing of an API method is reported by (1) a relevant HTTP status code, (2) a value of the success field and (3) a meaningful error message in the error field (see the Response section).

The following HTTP status codes are returned:

HTTP Status Code	Description
200	The request was executed successfully.
401	Authentication credentials were missing or authentication failed.
404	The requested record was not found.
429	The request could be served because the application has reached its usage limit.
500	Internal Server Error. Something has gone wrong, tell us!

Callback Function

TBD