Intro
This is a documentation of the APIs developed by BarentsWatch. It is intended for developers.
Application registration and authentication is mandatory when using the API.
The Barentswatch API is a REST or REST-ish API. It uses JSON via HTTPS. In general, GET is used for data retrieval, POST for adding, PUT for updates and DELETE to remove objects.
Header parameter
Content-Type: application/json
There might be endpoints in the API that are not mentioned in this documentation. Those endpoints are most likely used by the BarentsWatch.no portal and might change without notice. They should not be used by others.
The address of the API in the production environment is https://www.barentswatch.no/bwapi/. We have a pilot/testing environment at https://pilot.barentswatch.net/bwapi/, but this requires a client configured for this environment. Contact us you need access.
The API running on https://www.barentswatch.no/api/ is now deprecated, and will be removed. The exact date of removal will be announced in advance.
License
Where no other notice is given the data is provided under the Norwegian License for Open Government Data (NLOD). A draft interpretation of this license is available in Norwegian at www.barentswatch.no/om/api-vilkar Please refert to http://data.norge.no/nlod for information in English.
Credits to dataowners may not always follow the API but can be found through the web service for the respective APIs at www.barentswatch.no
Authentication
It is mandatory to authenticate. The API supports OpenID Connect. Provide an access token as a HTTP header. For details see Application registration and authentication.
To call the legacy API, see Legacy API.
Performance limitations
The BarentsWatch API is available for use by all third parties as long as they abide by the terms of the NLOD license. BarentsWatch imposes no formal requirements on the load that third party tools add to the API. However, please note:
Because this API aslo serves the BarentsWatch client, the performance of the API affects the experienced performance of the BarentsWatch site. This means that batch download jobs that make lots of resource hungry requests might cause the BarentsWatch site to slow down and become less user friendly. Therefore we request that third parties that use the API for batch download jobs please do so sequentially in a single thread. Please do not run multiple parallel downloads. Please note that this applies specifically to long running batch downloads. If you're using the API to make some third party client, there is no need to impose this limit on your users.
If you have requirements that make single tread batch downloads too slow or otherwise infeasible, please let us know. We might be able to make accomodations for your use case. Please use the feedback form on www.barentswatch.no to make requests.