Querying the API

Querying the API

URL endpoints

The API service currently exposes 2 resources at:

https://api.edinburghfestivalcity.com

Available query parameters

You can filter the list of events with any or all of the following optional parameters.

Authentication

An access key is required for all requests to the API and can be created from your profile. You must not reuse an access key between projects - you can create as a many access keys as you require.

Your secret token is used to calculate the correct signature for each API request and must never be disclosed as it is used to verify your requests.

The signature is calculated using the HMAC-SHA1 algorithm:

• Build the full API request URL, including your access key but excluding the server domain - eg /events?festival=book&key=12345. See the note below on URL encoding.
• Calculate the HMAC hash of the URL using the SHA1 algorithm using your secret token as the key.
• Append the hex-encoded hash to your URL as the signature parameter

Signature examples

• PHP
• Python

$api_key    = '12345678';
$secret_key = '135fa25acs33';
$query      = '/events?filter=that&key='.$api_key;
$signature  = hash_hmac('sha1', $query, $secret_key);
$url        = 'https://api.edinburghfestivalcity.com'.$query.'&signature='.$signature;

// HINT:
// you can use our official PHP client to take care of all this for you
//     https://github.com/festivalslab/api-client-php
//
// it's also available on composer
//    composer require festivalslab/api-client-php

import hmac
import hashlib
api_key     = '12345678'
secret_key  = '135fa25acs33'
query       = '/events?filter=that&key=' + api_key
signature   = hmac.new(secret_key, query, hashlib.sha1).hexdigest()
url         = 'https://api.edinburghfestivalcity.com' + query + '&signature=' + signature

Valid request URL:

https://api.edinburghfestivalcity.com/events?festival=jazz&key=12345678&signature=e471178c45d33d7a37f99f74f8ff59d97749e7bf

Access to Fringe listings

To access live Edinburgh Festival Fringe data you will need to apply for approval. All users can access a set of randomised Fringe data for testing, which you can request by including the festival=demofringe parameter in your search terms. All users have access to live listings data for events from the other participating festivals.

Synchronising with a local database

If you're using the API to feed a high-traffic site, or to merge with data from other sources, you may want to keep a local copy of our data. All the festival listings change over time, so you'll need to regularly synchronise this to keep it up to date. You're required to do this at least once every 24 hours, but we recommend more often if you can.

Each event has a url field that is guaranteed to be unique and constant even if the event's title / date / etc changes. This field is the event's ID in the API : we strongly recommend storing this and using it to match up data between each import.

To fetch just the updated events, use the modified_from query parameter with a time ten minutes before your last request. For example: ?modified_from=2017-02-13+09:50:00. Note that this query will also return cancelled and deleted events : see the event status documentation.

Event Status

Events should only be matched or changes tracked based on the unique url key in the response. It is essential that you do not attempt to match similar looking events on their titles, venues etc as these are likely or known to change.

By default, API responses do not include events that have been removed from the original festival's listings or where they are explicitly marked as cancelled in the data we receive. For most API queries, you should consider all events received as being active and display them accordingly.

However, if you include a modified_from parameter in your search query, the API may also return inactive events. This is to ensure you can consistently update any local cached or stored versions of the data when events are deleted or cancelled. The JSON formats include a status field for each event which should be interpreted as follows:

As a fallback for backwards compatibility with clients that do not properly handle the status field, the API also amends the title, description and performances list for events that have been deleted or cancelled.