Gov Bc Ca BC Data Catalogue API
Browse all Gov Bc Ca APIs✓ 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.
Use for: Search the BC Data Catalogue for groundwater datasets, List recently updated BC open data packages, Get the full metadata for a single BC data package by name, Find all packages tagged with transportation
Not supported: Does not host the dataset files themselves, run analytical queries inside datasets, or expose non-BC government data — use for BC Data Catalogue metadata search and retrieval only.
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.
Install Jentic One Beta
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.
Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.
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Step 1: 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 | sh2
Step 2: 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 instanceJentic 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.
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
Retrieve a package's activity history and revisions over time
Autocomplete package and tag names for search-as-you-type interfaces
Confirm the live CKAN API version with status_show before issuing other calls
Use Cases
Patterns agents use BC Data Catalogue 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
GET
/action/package_autocomplete
Autocomplete package names by prefix
GET
/action/status_show
Confirm the live CKAN API version
Why 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.
FAQs
Specific to using BC Data Catalogue 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.
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