Open Data — entry 004 of 44
Archive.org
The Internet Archive's Advanced Search and Metadata APIs let you query and pull structured records for its 99+ million digitized books, web captures, audio, video, and software items. Reads are keyless for both the search endpoint (archive.org/advancedsearch.php) and per-item metadata (archive.org/metadata/{identifier}), returning JSON, XML, or CSV depending on the requested output format.
The Internet Archive exposes its collection — over 124 million items, per a live q=*:* count in this run — through two separate, keyless HTTP endpoints rather than one unified API: a Solr-backed advancedsearch.php for querying, and a per-item metadata endpoint for pulling a single item's full record. The two return genuinely different JSON shapes, so code written against one won't parse the other.
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<a href="https://greatapis.com/api/archive-org/"><img src="https://greatapis.com/badge/archive-org.svg" alt="Scored 94 on greatapis.com"></a>Auth quickstart
- No API key or account is required — both endpoints below are public and keyless reads.
- Request
output=jsonexplicitly, and note thatoutputis the only spelling that works. Both cases probed live in this run: calling/advancedsearch.phpwith no format parameter at all returns200withcontent-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8— a full HTML search-results page — whileformat=jsonis rejected outright, returning200 text/htmlwith the body[UNSUPPORTED_VALUE] A requested parameter has an inappropriate value json for request parameter format. - CORS is open on both endpoints: a probe in this run confirmed
access-control-allow-origin: *on/advancedsearch.phpand on/metadata/{identifier}, both bare and with anOrigin: https://example.comheader.
Your key is stored only in this browser (localStorage) and sent directly to the API — never to greatapis.
Search items by title
GEThttps://archive.org/advancedsearch.php?q=title%3A(python)&fl[]=identifier&fl[]=title&fl[]=mediatype&rows=2&output=json
{"responseHeader":{"status":0,"QTime":27,"params":{"query":"title:python","qin":"title:(python)","fields":"identifier,title,mediatype","wt":"json","rows":2,"start":0}},"response":{"numFound":8564,"start":0,"docs":[{"identifier":"soundcloud-245108190","mediatype":"audio","title":"FULL: Monty Python vs. PC police - 2/2/16"},{"identifier":"pbscelyc7gi5n9yygcywnio7wttmdgzstfjbqris","mediatype":"audio","title":"Scalable Python for Everyone, Everywhere // Matthew Rocklin // MLOps Meetup #38"}]}}rows=2 was requested directly in this run's probe (not truncated after capture) — both returned docs are complete, unmodified objects. response.numFound (8564 at probe time) reflects the full match count across the whole corpus, not just the returned page.
Try it
Developer reference
https://archive.org- GET/metadata/{identifier}
- GET/advancedsearch.php?q={query}&output=json
Gotchas & limits
- Omitting
output=jsonsilently returns an HTML search-results page instead of an error — confirmed live in this run (see authSteps). Always set it explicitly rather than assuming JSON is the default. /metadata/{identifier}returns a completely different shape from/advancedsearch.php's Solr-style{responseHeader, response:{numFound,start,docs}}. A live probe of/metadata/pbscelyc7gi5n9yygcywnio7wttmdgzstfjbqris(one of this example's own search hits) returned exactly these 13 top-level keys:alternate_locations, created, d1, d2, dir, files, files_count, item_last_updated, item_size, metadata, server, uniq, workable_servers. Note what is not there:identifieris not a top-level key — it lives atmetadata.identifier, alongside the item's title/creator/description. The file listing is a separate top-levelfilesarray.- The
/metadata/{identifier}top-level key set varies by item, so don't hard-code it. Probed live in this run: the 13 keys above for one item, but/metadata/nasareturns those same 13 plusis_collectionandreviews.metadata,files, andfiles_countwere present on both — treat those as the stable ones and probe before depending on anything else. - Requesting
/metadata/{identifier}for an identifier that does not exist returns200with an empty JSON object{}— confirmed live in this run — not a 404 or an error body. Check for an empty object rather than relying on HTTP status to detect a missing item.