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<ul class="list-inline">
<li class="list-inline-item">
<a href="#endpoint-index">Endpoint index</a>
</li>
<li class="list-inline-item">
<a href="#data-model">Data model</a>
</li>
<li class="list-inline-item">
<a href="#version">Version</a>
</li class="list-inline-item">
<li class="list-inline-item">
<a href="#schema">Schema</a>
</li>
<li class="list-inline-item">
<a href="#parameters">Parameters</a>
</li>
<li class="list-inline-item">
<a href="#errors">Errors</a>
</li>
<li class="list-inline-item">
<a href="#pagination">Pagination</a>
</li>
<li class="list-inline-item">
<a href="#rate-limiting">Rate limiting</a>
</li>
</ul>
<h4 id="endpoint-index">Endpoint index</h4>
<p>You can jump directly to the
<strong>
<a href="/api/1/">endpoint index</a>
</strong>, which lists all available API functionalities, or read on for more general information about the API.</p>
<h4 id="data-model">Data model</h4>
<p>The
<a href="https://www.softwareheritage.org/">Software Heritage</a> project harvests publicly available source code by tracking software distribution channels such as
version control systems, tarball releases, and distribution packages.</p>
<p>All retrieved source code and related metadata are stored in the Software Heritage archive, that is conceptually a
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree">Merkle DAG</a>. All nodes in the graph are content-addressable, i.e., their node identifiers are computed by hashing their
content and, transitively, that of all nodes reachable from them; and no node or edge is ever removed from the graph: the
Software Heritage archive is an append-only data structure.</p>
<p>The following types of objects (i.e., graph nodes) can be found in the Software Heritage archive
<small>(for more information see the
<a href="https://wiki.softwareheritage.org/index.php?title=Glossary">Software Heritage glossary</a>)</small>:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<strong>Content</strong>: a specific version of a file stored in the archive, identified by its cryptographic hashes (currently:
SHA1, Git-like &quot;salted&quot; SHA1, SHA256). Note that content objects are nameless; their names are context-dependent
and stored as part of directory entries (see below).
<br />
<em>Also known as:</em> &quot;blob&quot;</li>
<li>
<strong>Directory</strong>: a list of directory entries, where each entry can point to content objects (&quot;file entries&quot;),
revisions (&quot;revision entries&quot;), or transitively to other directories (&quot;directory entries&quot;). All entries
are associated to the local name of the entry (i.e., a relative path without any path separator) and permission metadata
(e.g., chmod value or equivalent).</li>
<li>
<strong>Revision</strong>: a point in time snapshot of the content of a directory, together with associated development metadata
(e.g., author, timestamp, log message, etc).
<br />
<em>Also known as:</em> &quot;commit&quot;.</li>
<li>
<strong>Release</strong>: a revision that has been marked as noteworthy with a specific name (e.g., a version number), together
with associated development metadata (e.g., author, timestamp, etc).
<br />
<em>Also known as:</em> &quot;tag&quot;</li>
<li>
<strong>Origin</strong>: an Internet-based location from which a coherent set of objects (contents, revisions, releases, etc.)
archived by Software Heritage has been obtained. Origins are currently identified by URLs.</li>
<li>
<strong>Visit</strong>: the passage of Software Heritage on a given origin, to retrieve all source code and metadata available
there at the time. A visit object stores the state of all visible branches (if any) available at the origin at visit
time; each of them points to a revision object in the archive. Future visits of the same origin will create new visit
objects, without removing previous ones.</li>
<li>
<strong>Person</strong>: an entity referenced by a revision as either the author or the committer of the corresponding change.
A person is associated to a full name and/or an email address.</li>
</ul>
<h4 id="version">Version</h4>
<p>The current version of the API is
<strong>v1</strong>.</p>
<p>
<strong>Warning:</strong> this version of the API is not to be considered stable yet. Non-backward compatible changes might happen
even without changing the API version number.</p>
<h4 id="schema">Schema</h4>
<p>API access is over HTTPS.</p>
<p>All API endpoints are rooted at
<a href="https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/" class="uri">https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/</a>.</p>
<p>Data is sent and received as JSON by default.</p>
<p>Example:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>from the command line:</p>
<pre><code class="shell">curl -i https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/stat/counters/</code></pre>
</li>
</ul>
<h4 id="response-format-override">Response format override</h4>
<p>The response format can be overridden using the
<code>Accept</code> request header. In particular,
<code>Accept: text/html</code> (that web browsers send by default) requests HTML pretty-printing, whereas
<code>Accept: application/yaml</code> requests YAML-encoded responses.</p>
<p>Example:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="/api/1/stat/counters/" class="uri">/api/1/stat/counters/</a>
</li>
<li>
<p>from the command line:</p>
<pre><code class="shell">curl -i -H &#39;Accept: application/yaml&#39; https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/stat/counters/</code></pre>
</li>
</ul>
<h4 id="parameters">Parameters</h4>
<p>Some API endpoints can be tweaked by passing optional parameters. For GET requests, optional parameters can be passed as
an HTTP query string.</p>
<p>The optional parameter
<code>fields</code> is accepted by all endpoints that return dictionaries and can be used to restrict the list of fields returned
by the API, in case you are not interested in all of them. By default, all available fields are returned.</p>
<p>Example:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="/api/1/stat/counters/?fields=content,directory,revision" class="uri">/api/1/stat/counters/?fields=content,directory,revision</a>
</li>
<li>
<p>from the command line:</p>
<pre><code class="shell">curl https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/stat/counters/?fields=content,directory,revision</code></pre>
</li>
</ul>
<h4 id="errors">Errors</h4>
<p>While API endpoints will return different kinds of errors depending on their own semantics, some error patterns are common
across all endpoints.</p>
<p>Sending malformed data, including syntactically incorrect object identifiers, will result in a
<code>400 Bad Request</code> HTTP response. Example:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="/api/1/content/deadbeef/" class="uri">/api/1/content/deadbeef/</a> (client error: &quot;deadbeef&quot; is too short to be a syntactically valid object identifier)</li>
<li>
<p>from the command line:</p>
<pre><code class="shell">curl -i https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/content/deadbeef/</code></pre>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Requesting non existent resources will result in a
<code>404 Not Found</code> HTTP response. Example:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="/api/1/content/0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef01234567/" class="uri">/api/1/content/0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef01234567/</a> (error: no object with that identifier is available [yet?])</li>
<li>
<p>from the command line:</p>
<pre><code class="shell">curl -i https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/content/04740277a81c5be6c16f6c9da488ca073b770d7f/</code></pre>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Unavailability of the underlying storage backend will result in a
<code>503 Service Unavailable</code> HTTP response.</p>
<h4 id="pagination">Pagination</h4>
<p>Requests that might potentially return many items will be paginated.</p>
<p>Page size is set to a default (usually: 10 items), but might be overridden with the
<code>per_page</code> query parameter up to a maximum (usually: 50 items). Example:</p>
<pre><code class="shell">curl https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/origin/1/visits/?per_page=2</code></pre>
<p>To navigate through paginated results, a
<code>Link</code> HTTP response header is available to link the current result page to the next one. Example:</p>
<pre><code class="shell">curl -i https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/origin/1/visits/?per_page=2 | grep ^Link:
Link: &lt;/api/1/origin/1/visits/?last_visit=2&amp;per_page=2&gt;; rel=&quot;next&quot;,</code></pre>
<h4 id="rate-limiting">Rate limiting</h4>
<p>Due to limited resource availability on the back end side, API usage is currently rate limited. Furthermore, as API usage
is currently entirely anonymous (i.e., without any authentication), API &quot;users&quot; are currently identified by their
origin IP address.</p>
<p>Three HTTP response fields will inform you about the current state of limits that apply to your current rate limiting bucket:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<code>X-RateLimit-Limit</code>: maximum number of permitted requests per hour</li>
<li>
<code>X-RateLimit-Remaining</code>: number of permitted requests remaining before the next reset</li>
<li>
<code>X-RateLimit-Reset</code>: the time (expressed in
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time">Unix time</a> seconds) at which the current rate limiting will expire, resetting to a fresh
<code>X-RateLimit-Limit</code>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Example:</p>
<pre><code class="shell">curl -i https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/stat/counters/ | grep ^X-RateLimit
X-RateLimit-Limit: 60
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 54
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1485794532</code></pre>

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