VGMdb API

What Is It?

VGMdb.net is an excellent resource, containing gigabytes of information about video game music. It documents the relationships between games, albums that represent games, and all the people that contributed to an album.

However, VGMdb does not provide an API to access its information, which provides an obstacle to programs that want to use its information. This site is a way to programmatically access the information on VGMdb.net. The web interface provides an easy way to explore this API and discover how the links work. Format selectors on the right will show any page in a different format.

API

All of the information that is parsed out of vgmdb.net is exposed through JSON. A subset of that information is also available in HTML+RDFa, RDF+XML, and Turtle. Send an HTTP Accept header to request a format, or append a ?format selector to the url.

Documentation

The API is documented using RAML, available here. The JSON responses are documented with JSON Schema, and each info page has a validation link for verification against the respective schema.

Searching

Searching the database is easy. You can search for everything, or just a specific category. Keywords shorter than 3 characters are ignored.
/search/<query> - Search for matching items
/search?q=<query> - Search for matching items
/search/albums/<query> - Search for matching albums
/search/albums?q=<query> - Search for matching albums
/search/artists/<query> - Search for matching artists
/search/artists?q=<query> - Search for matching artists
/search/orgs/<query> - Search for matching organizations
/search/orgs?q=<query> - Search for matching organizations
/search/products/<query> - Search for matching products
/search/products?q=<query> - Search for matching products

Browse Lists

An index of all items in each category is also available.
/albumlist/<letter> - View all of the albums by letter
/artistlist/<letter> - View all of the artists by letter
/orglist - View all of the organizations
/orglist/<letter> - View all of the organizations by letter
/eventlist - View all of the events
/eventlist/<year> - View all of the events by year
/productlist/<letter> - View all of the products by letter

Recent Changes

A list of recent changes is available.
/recent/albums - View recent album changes
/recent/media - View recent album media changes
/recent/tracklists - View recent album tracklist changes
/recent/scans - View recent album scanned covers
/recent/artists - View recent artist changes
/recent/products - View recent product changes
/recent/labels - View recent label organization changes
/recent/links - View recent album and artist links changes
/recent/ratings - View recent album rating changes

Information Pages

Each item in the database is represented with a unique URL, which follows this pattern:
/album/<id> - Album information
/artist/<id> - Artist information
/org/<id> - Organization information
/event/<id> - Event information
/product/<id> - Product information

Seller Information

Artists and Albums have an additional endpoint to get information about a few online stores where their products are available. The main /sellers endpoint will wait until the information is completely available. The /sellers?allow_partial=true option may return results that are not yet complete, with a Refresh header to check back for new search results.
/album/<id>/sellers - Album sellers
/artist/<id>/sellers - Artist sellers
/album/<id>/sellers?allow_partial=true - Partial album sellers with Refresh header
/artist/<id>/sellers?allow_partial=true - Partial artist sellers with Refresh header

Format Selection

This webservice will honor HTTP Accept headers. It will also produce a specific format if a ?format=<format> option is added to the url. The jsonp format requires a &callback=<function_name> option for the padding.

HTTP Accept types

text/html - default HTML output
application/json - JSON output
application/javascript - JSONP output
applications/rdf+xml - RDF+XML output
application/x-turtle - Turtle output
text/turtle - Turtle output
application/yaml - YAML output
application/x-yaml - YAML output
text/yaml - YAML output
text/x-yaml - YAML output

Format Query String

html - default HTML output
json - JSON output
jsonp - JSONP output
rdf - RDF+XML output
turtle - Turtle output
yaml - YAML output

Open Source

The code is hosted at GitHub for your pleasure.