Record API Documentation
The Record API provides direct access to Europeana’s data and metadata, which is modelled using EDM. EDM is an open flexible data model used to capture the data and metadata about Cultural Heritage Objects (CHOs). The Record API is used to retrieve all of the data and metadata that relates to a single Cultural Heritage object, which will have a single Europeana ID. A Europeana ID is made up of a dataset number, and a record ID. For the object at this URL: https://www.europeana.eu/item/90402/RP_P_1984_87, the dataset ID is 90402, and the record ID is RP_P_1984_87. Both are findable by looking at the URL.
Getting Started
Every call to the Record API is an HTTPS request in the following URL signature:
https://api.europeana.eu/record/v2/[RECORD_ID].[FORMAT]
Where the variables in the URL path mean:
RECORD_ID | The identifier of the record which is composed of the dataset identifier plus a local identifier within the dataset in the form of "/DATASET_ID/LOCAL_ID", for more detail see Europeana ID. |
FORMAT | The file extension corresponding to one of the supported output formats, namely: .json, .jsonld, .rdf. See next section on Output Formats |
Additional parameters may apply to the request above such as the API key and Browser access.
An example Record API call to get all of the data and metadata from this item in JSON would be: https://api.europeana.eu/record/v2/90402/RP_P_1984_87.json?wskey=YOURAPIKEY
Supported Output Formats
The Record API supports 3 serialization formats, namely: JSON, JSON-LD and RDF/XML. The primary and default output supported by this API is JSON which also means that some fields are only available in this format. Both JSON-LD and RDF/XML are formats to represent Linked Data which used predefined transport schemas for serializing RDF data. To request a record in either of these formats, just alter the extension of the call to the desired format. The table below explains each of the formats and their respective extensions.
Error Responses
An error occurring 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. The following table shows the fields appearing within an error response:
The following kinds of errors can be returned by the API:
Retrieving a record in the default format (JSON)
JSON is the primary output format of the Record API. It uses a Europeana-specific schema for representing EDM data.
A response in JSON will always contain several fields that present information about the handling of the request, while the concrete information about the record is presented in the "object" field.
Object
The Object gathers all the information contained within an EDM metadata record.
JSON Structures and Fields for EDM
The JSON structures and fields defined in this section all represent classes and properties defined in EDM. More information can be found on the Europeana Data Model documentation page