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USASpending.gov Last Updated
October 31, 2008

Contracts data was updated for all 24 CFO Act agencies at this time.

Assistance data was updated for 20 of 24 CFO act agencies. Updates are currently pending for the following agencies: DHS, NRC, NSF and TREAS.

For more details, please click here


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API Documentation

General Information

USAspending.gov is pleased to announce the availability of its data in an Application Programming Interface (API).

The API consists of two methods, fpds.php and faads.php, that allow access to the data to the Federal contracts and Federal assistance databases respectively. All data present on USAspending.gov is available through the API, except for pie charts and end-of-search totals.

Summary for contracts for the state of Alabama:
//www.usaspending.gov/fpds/fpds.php?datype=X&detail=-1&state=AL

List of assistance transactions to entities with "Smith" in their name for FY 2006:
//www.usaspending.gov/faads/faads.php?datype=X&detail=2&recipient_name=Smith&fiscal_year=2006


Methods

Important: API calls will retrieve a maximum of 1000 records per call, in order to save bandwidth. Please don't attempt to retrieve large subsections of the database through repeated calls to the API.

The two links below show how to retrieve data in XML through API calls:

fpds.php

faads.php

XML Formats

The XML format will vary by the level of detail: detail = -1 (summary) will produce different output than detail = 4 (complete). The XML formats will hopefully be fairly self explanatory; for meanings of specific data fields, consult the data dictionary. There are also format examples within the two methods pages linked above.