BC Data Catalogue API

Name: BC Data Catalogue API API
Brand: BC Data Catalogue API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecData EnrichmentData Transformationoauth2, apiKey22 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Search and retrieve metadata for British Columbia open government datasets exposed through the CKAN-based BC Data Catalogue.

Connect the BC Data Catalogue API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the BC Data Catalogue API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Install Jentic One Beta (Self-Hosted)

Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with BC Data Catalogue API API.

Search the BC Data Catalogue for packages matching keywords or facets

List all packages currently published on data.gov.bc.ca

Fetch full metadata, resources, and distributions for a single package

Enumerate the tag vocabulary used across catalogue packages

GET STARTED

Start building with BC Data Catalogue API API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

The BC Data Catalogue API provides programmatic access to the Province of British Columbia's open data catalogue, built on the open-source CKAN platform. It exposes search, package (dataset) listing, package detail, tag enumeration, and revision history endpoints, so applications can find authoritative BC government datasets and link to their distributions. Authentication is anonymous for read access and supports a CKAN API key for write or restricted operations. The catalogue covers thousands of provincial datasets across natural resources, transportation, demographics, and public services.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use BC Data Catalogue API API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Open Data Discovery Portal

Build a province-wide dataset search experience by querying the BC Data Catalogue from a custom front end. GET /action/package_search accepts CKAN-style query syntax and returns packages with their resources, while /action/package_show returns full metadata for a selected dataset. Useful for embedding BC open data search into a research portal without re-hosting the catalogue.

Search the BC Data Catalogue for packages matching 'wildfire' and return the title and dataset ID of the top five results.

Dataset Refresh Monitoring

Track when BC government datasets are revised so downstream pipelines can re-pull updated CSVs. /action/package_activity_list returns the activity stream for a package and /action/package_revision_list returns its revisions, so a monitoring agent can detect changes within hours of publication. Reduces stale data risk in derived analytics.

Retrieve the activity list for the package with id 'bc-air-quality-monitoring' and return the timestamp of the most recent revision.

Tag-Driven Dataset Recommendation

Surface related datasets to a user already viewing one by reading the package's tags via /action/package_show, then querying /action/package_search with a tag filter. Tag-based recommendation works without machine learning because the BC Data Catalogue's tag taxonomy is curated by data publishers.

List all tags used in the catalogue, then for the tag 'forestry' return the names of every package tagged with it.

AI Agent for Government Data

An AI research assistant built on Jentic helps an analyst find authoritative BC government data without browsing data.gov.bc.ca by hand. The agent searches Jentic for 'find bc open data', loads the package_search operation, and returns matching datasets with download links from the package's resource list.

Use Jentic to search 'find bc open data', then run package_search with q='salmon' and return the resource download URLs from the top result.

Key Endpoints

22 endpoints — the bc data catalogue api provides programmatic access to the province of british columbia's open data catalogue, built on the open-source ckan platform.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/action/package_search

Search the catalogue for packages

GET

/action/package_list

List all packages in the catalogue

GET

/action/package_show

Retrieve a single package's metadata and resources

GET

/action/tag_list

List all tags used across packages

GET

/action/package_activity_list

List the activity stream for a package

GET

/action/package_autocomplete

Autocomplete package names by prefix

GET

/action/status_show

Confirm the live CKAN API version

GET

/action/package_search

Search the catalogue for packages

GET

/action/package_list

List all packages in the catalogue

GET

/action/package_show

Retrieve a single package's metadata and resources

GET

/action/tag_list

List all tags used across packages

GET

/action/package_activity_list

List the activity stream for a package

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Any CKAN API key required for write or restricted reads is stored in Jentic's encrypted vault and injected as the ckan_api_key header at execution time. Anonymous reads pass through unchanged.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search by intent (e.g., 'find bc open data on wildfires') and Jentic returns the matching package_search operation with its CKAN query parameters, so the agent issues the correct query without learning CKAN's query DSL up front.

Time to first call

Direct CKAN integration: half a day to learn the action API, paging, and faceting. Through Jentic: under 30 minutes from sign-up to a working dataset search.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Alternative

Data.gov API

Data.gov exposes the United States federal open data catalogue with a similar CKAN-style surface

Choose Data.gov when the analyst needs US federal datasets rather than British Columbia provincial datasets

Alternative

GOV.UK API

GOV.UK provides an API surface over UK government content and datasets

Choose GOV.UK when the user wants UK central government data rather than Canadian provincial data

Complementary

BC Geocoder REST API

Use BC Geocoder to resolve addresses found inside BC Data Catalogue datasets to coordinates

Pair when a BC dataset contains addresses that need to be geocoded for mapping or proximity analysis

FAQs

Specific to using BC Data Catalogue API API through Jentic.

What authentication does the BC Data Catalogue API use?

Read access is anonymous. The spec also defines a CKAN-style internal API key in the ckan_api_key header and a GitHub OAuth flow for restricted operations. Through Jentic, any required CKAN API key is held in the encrypted vault and injected at request time so it never enters the agent's context.

Can I search the BC Data Catalogue for packages with the BC Data Catalogue API?

Yes. GET /action/package_search accepts CKAN-style query syntax including q for keyword search, fq for facet filters, rows for paging, and sort for ordering. The response includes packages with their resources, tags, and metadata.

What are the rate limits for the BC Data Catalogue API?

The OpenAPI spec does not declare specific rate limits. Treat the catalogue as a shared public service: paginate large result sets with rows and start, avoid issuing dozens of parallel searches, and cache package_show responses where possible.

How do I retrieve a single dataset's metadata through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'get bc open data package', load the GET /action/package_show operation, and execute with the package id or name. With pip install jentic the call is one search, one load, one execute and returns the full package record including resource download URLs.

Does the BC Data Catalogue API return downloadable file URLs?

Yes. Package responses include a resources array where each resource carries a url field pointing at the actual data file or service endpoint. Resource URLs link to formats such as CSV, GeoJSON, WMS, and ArcGIS REST services depending on the dataset.