We’re proud to announce that version 0.3 of the OpenCorporates API is now live, with many, many new features, improvements (and even a few bug fixes). Along the way, we’ve also given it a visual refresh:
The major improvements are:
- Access to corporate networks – our open corporate network work is truly ground-breaking, and providing access via the API for others to use and interpret is a major step forward in the world of open corporate networks.
- Access to the underlying data behind corporate network data. As explained in the blog post explaining the underlying modelling of the corporate network data, we actually have very, very granular data on which the networks are built, and we’re making this available in the interests of full transparency, so that cool new interpretations can be made from it, and because it allows the data to be incorporated at a much more granular level that has previously been available (important in some industries such as credit metric scores).
- Improved provenance/granularity. Internally we’re in the process from migrating from our existing ‘datum’ model to ‘statements’, which provide much more detail, more granularity (particular around changes in data) and more detailed provenances. This is the power behind the corporate network data, and will ultimately become the default. We’ll be writing about this further in the future, with tutorials on how to use it, but we think this is a major step forward in business information modelling.
- Access to financial accounts data Thanks to UK Companies House releasing their XBRL data as open data we have over 1.2 million UK companies with accounts data, and will be extending this with other sources in the future
- Rich filtering and ordering of company searches allowing users to access companies that have been added or incorporated by status, jurisdiction and many other facets. This is an incredibly powerful feature, and has obvious immediate usage, such as newly incorporate companies with a given industry code, or newly dissolved ones with Goldman in the name, etc
- Secure access via https This will like be enforced for all calls in the future
- API usage data – if you have an API key, it’s important that you know how many API calls you’ve made, and how many you’ve got left. This information is now available via an API call and on your OpenCorporates account page:
Full documentation for v0.3 is available on the API website and this version will be available as beta for the next week or so (i.e. you’ll need to specify it in the API request), after which it will become the default and version 0.1 will be retired. You can keep using version 0.2 (the default at time of writing this post) by specifying it in the API request, and this will be supported until v0.4 comes out.
We’ve also had major improvements to the getting hold of API keys, and non-open-data users can now purchase API plans online and get immediate access from as little as £99/year (previously it was a manual and somewhat opaque process). Just go to https://opencorporates.com/api_accounts/new (you’ll need to register for OpenCorporates if you haven’t already done so). Roll on open corporate data!
blog.opencorporates.com 