Legal Status
This site displays a prototype of a “Web 2.0” version of the daily Federal Register. It is not an official legal edition of the Federal Register, and does not replace the official print version or the official electronic version on GPO’s govinfo.gov.
The documents posted on this site are XML renditions of published Federal Register documents. Each document posted on the site includes a link to the corresponding official PDF file on govinfo.gov. This prototype edition of the daily Federal Register on FederalRegister.gov will remain an unofficial informational resource until the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register (ACFR) issues a regulation granting it official legal status. For complete information about, and access to, our official publications and services, go to About the Federal Register on NARA's archives.gov.
The OFR/GPO partnership is committed to presenting accurate and reliable regulatory information on FederalRegister.gov with the objective of establishing the XML-based Federal Register as an ACFR-sanctioned publication in the future. While every effort has been made to ensure that the material on FederalRegister.gov is accurately displayed, consistent with the official SGML-based PDF version on govinfo.gov, those relying on it for legal research should verify their results against an official edition of the Federal Register. Until the ACFR grants it official status, the XML rendition of the daily Federal Register on FederalRegister.gov does not provide legal notice to the public or judicial notice to the courts.
Reader Aids
This section of our Reader Aids is designed for anyone who wants to use Federal Register data programmatically. Explore our API interactively, get details about all of our API endpoints, and more.
Reader aid items in this section
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REST API & Interactive Documentation
Federal Register data originates with the files used to produce the print and PDF editions. During the publication process these are transformed into bulk XML files made available by the Government Publishing Office (GPO). Additional MODS files that contain metadata about each document are also produced at the same time. Because these files are meant … Continue reading “REST API & Interactive Documentation”
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API Clients
Ruby API Client The FederalRegister.gov team maintains a Ruby API client that is available as a Ruby gem. This client gem is used to power the web display of FederalRegister.gov. You can find it on GitHub and RubyGems. Other resources To learn more about our API you can read more here and explore the API with … Continue reading “API Clients”
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FederalRegister.gov is Open Source
Project Source Code FederalRegister.gov is a fully open source project and its source code is available on Github. The FederalRegister.gov source code is available in two repositories. The first, federalregister-api-core, contains the code that powers the import of Federal Register data from various sources and serves our API responses. This repo is undergoing active cleanup … Continue reading “FederalRegister.gov is Open Source”
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Bulk Data
Bulk data is currently only available in XML format. The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) and the National Archives’ Office of the Federal Register (OFR) partnership is offering bulk data downloads of Federal Register XML files to the general public via Data.gov and FDsys at https://www.govinfo.gov/bulkdata/FR. Information on the legal status, authenticity, and schema of … Continue reading “Bulk Data”
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FederalRegister.gov API Case Study
One of the difficulties for anyone seeking to use government data is to match up datasets from various Federal sources. Identifiers such as field names and agency name references often are not identical. Further, the data is often complex and requires a fair amount of understanding of agency processes to create a coherent whole. On August … Continue reading “FederalRegister.gov API Case Study”