Overview

Welcome to the OpenAtlas API documentation. OpenAtlas provides programmatic access to archaeological, historical, and geospatial data stored in an OpenAtlas instance.

Whether you want to build a public presentation website, connect analytical tools, perform research queries, or integrate with Linked Open Data (LOD) networks, the OpenAtlas API provides human- and machine-readable data across multiple standard formats.

Overview & Philosophy

The OpenAtlas API combines two complementary paradigms:

  1. RESTful Web Services: Easy-to-use, predictable URLs delivering JSON and GeoJSON for developers, web applications, and desktop GIS tools.

  2. Linked Open Data (LOD): Rich, graph-based RDF representations using the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM), the international Linked Art profile, and W3C SKOS for controlled vocabularies.

Versioning

OpenAtlas follows sequenced semantic versioning. The API currently supports two major generations:

Version

Status

Description

0.4

Stable

The proven RESTful API (Flask-RESTful). Provides endpoints for entities, types, GeoJSON, and LPF. Documented in API v0.4 (Stable).

1.0

Beta

The next-generation API based on OpenAPI 3.1 and Pydantic. Features strictly compliant Linked Art profiles, SKOS thesauri, IIIF Presentation API v2/v3, and preliminary OpenAtlas LOD stubs.

Interactive Documentation UIs

For API v1, OpenAtlas provides three interactive browser interfaces that let you explore, inspect, and test all 31 endpoints directly without writing a single line of code:

Swagger UI

Interactive testing sandbox. Try out endpoints, enter parameters, authorize with a token, and execute live requests.

/api/1/docs/swagger
ReDoc

Clean, publication-ready three-panel documentation focusing on schemas, types, and response models.

/api/1/docs/redoc
Scalar

Modern, responsive API client interface with instant code snippets in various programming languages.

/api/1/docs/scalar

Machine-Readable OpenAPI Specification

The complete OpenAPI 3.1 specification for API v1 is dynamically generated at:

  • URL: /api/1/docs/openapi.json (or https://<your-instance>/api/1/docs/openapi.json)

Guide Contents

  • Getting Started - Access modes, JWT Bearer tokens, and first requests.

  • Linked Open Data - Semantic Web concepts, CIDOC CRM, CRMarchaeo, Linked Art, and SKOS.

  • API v1 (Beta) - Complete index of all 31 endpoints, parameters, and error codes.

  • API v0.4 (Stable) - Documentation for the current stable API v0.4.