API Info

If you're looking to create an app for a mobile phone (or some kind of web service, or whatever else your heart desires) that uses Barnivore data, you're in luck! We have an API available.

Please note that this API is grandfathered for existing users. We'll keep it running, but we don't have the resources to support new applications.

Here's the FAQ before we get into the details:

Here's some basic info about our Barnivore data feeds that you can use to form the basis for your app:

First of all, information is available for beer, cider, wine, and liquor through one of these (you can get it in XML format by changing the extension):

http://barnivore.com/beer.json

http://barnivore.com/cider.json

http://barnivore.com/wine.json

http://barnivore.com/liquor.json

To retrieve information on individual products:

http://barnivore.com/company/559.json (or any other ID, obviously)

Finally, for search:

http://barnivore.com/search.json?keyword=searchtermsgohere

Please use the feed URLs for batch jobs and not recurring calls, due to the volume of data they move, but that's basically where we're at! At the moment, most people are crawling the feed/info results and caching the data locally on the device or their servers, but if you're feeling ambitious about real time data, let's talk about the best way to structure that - it's not so much about our servers as it is the mobile web's speed and cost constraints.

We may add fields or other calls, but we'll do our best not to make any breaking changes to these API calls. If there are other calls that would be helpful to you, please don't hesitate to ask.

Oh, and just to point this out, you don't have to make the app for free - we're happy to see Barnivore data in the wild, and our terms of use are pretty liberal, so if you want to try to make a buck off it, you're welcome to do so. We just ask for credit so that people will know where it comes from, because the results for companies can change (often for the better as a direct result of people asking on behalf of Barnivore, which is awesome) and we don't want to be responsible for spreading more stale information and adding to confusion instead of solving it. Full terms are available here, but let me know if you have any questions!

And to be clear, while we want some credit, that shouldn't extend to your app's name. In other words, don't use the term Barnivore or some clever derivation, because people will think we wrote it, and we're not your tech support department. Please ensure that your users know that you're using Barnivore data, but you're not Barnivore.

Thanks, and have fun!

Jason