Hakai-API

Hakai-API is a service that provides data in JSON format via web URLs. For example, the URL https://hecate.hakai.org/api/ctd/casts gives a JSON response of CTD cast data. These URLs are intended to be requested by a script (instead of a web browser) to load data without having to have a local copy of it downloaded in advance.

Audience

Hakai-API is intended for people building scripts to analyze scientific data. It contains information about how to request data from the Hakai EIMS database to automate the process of downloading and loading data into scripts that do statistical analysis, etc.

It is not intended to be used by people who want to browse datasets in a web browser. For that use-case, we recommend using the Hakai Data Portal or EIMS Portal.

Getting Started

• If you are new to using Hakai-API, we recommend you start with the tutorial.

• If you are familiar with Hakai-API, you can start by downloading one of the client applications, seeing what data endpoints are available to get the data you are looking for, and using querystring filtering to learn how to search for the specific data you are looking for.

• Finally, if you are developing a client application, you can read the documentation about how Hakai-API works behind the scenes in the Development section.

Summary

• Use the client applications to make authorized requests to the data URLs.
• The available data endpoints are listed here
  • If the endpoint is /foo/bar make your data request to the URL https://hecate.hakai.org/api/foo/bar.
• Use querystring filtering to get the specific data you want.

Be aware that each endpoint returns 20 records by default

• You can shut this off by adding limit=-1 in the querystring of your url.
• Please limit the data you are going to receive in some other way before you shut this off (e.g. with querystring filtering).