# /ema/documents/search

`POST /api/ema/documents/search`

Price: 68 credits

Search the EMA's published assessment documents for centrally authorised medicines. Narrows by the medicine's EMA product number or trade name, document type, title text, EMA reference number, and the first-published and last-updated dates. Every match carries the PDF link for the English document and the per-language links where the register publishes translations.

## How to use it

Links documents, it does not read them: `url` and `translations` point at PDFs whose text this endpoint does not return. `document_type` is matched exactly against the register's own slug, so pass `assessment-report` rather than 'assessment report'; `ema_product_number` is also exact, while the name and title filters match a substring. The clean way to list one medicine's whole dossier is its EMA product number, which ema/medicines/search returns as `id`. Roughly three quarters of the records carry a `status` of `unknown`, which is the register's own placeholder rather than a statement about the document.

## Parameters

- `access-token` (string, required)

## Request body

- `timeout` (integer) — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
- `ema_product_number` (string, nullable) — Keep documents of one medicine, by its EMA product number (examples: "EMEA/H/C/003820"; minLength: 1)
- `medicine_name` (string, nullable) — Substring of the medicine's trade name (examples: "Keytruda"; minLength: 1)
- `document_type` (string, nullable) — Document type, matched exactly as the register spells it (examples: "assessment-report", "product-information", "overview"; minLength: 1)
- `document_title` (string, nullable) — Substring of the document title (examples: "Risk-management-plan"; minLength: 1)
- `reference_number` (string, nullable) — Substring of the EMA reference number (examples: "EMA/PRAC"; minLength: 1)
- `published_from` (string, nullable) — Keep documents first published on or after this date, YYYY-MM-DD (examples: "2025-01-01")
- `updated_from` (string, nullable) — Keep documents last updated on or after this date, YYYY-MM-DD (examples: "2026-01-01")
- `count` (integer, required) — Max number of documents to return (min: 1; max: 20171)

## Response

### 200 — Successful Response

- `@type` (string) (default: "EmaDocument")
- `id` (string, required)
- `document_title` (string) (default: "")
- `document_type` (string) (default: "")
- `url` (string) (default: "")
- `medicine_name` (string, nullable)
- `ema_product_number` (string, nullable)
- `reference_number` (string, nullable)
- `status` (string, nullable)
- `published_date` (string, nullable)
- `updated_date` (string, nullable)
- `translations` (object) (default: {})
  - `*` (string)

## Errors

### 422 — Validation Error

A date field was not YYYY-MM-DD.

What to do: Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.

- `detail` (array)
  - `loc` (array, required)
  - `msg` (string, required)
  - `type` (string, required)
  - `input` (any)
  - `ctx` (object)

### 408

The request ran past its time limit

What to do: Raise `timeout` in the request body, up to the maximum this endpoint documents. Lowering `count` or turning off the `with_*` flags also helps, because less work finishes sooner.

### 412

No published document matched those filters.

What to do: Retrying will not help: either the entity does not exist, or the input points at a different one.

### 429

Too many requests: a rate limit or a usage window is exhausted

What to do: When the response carries an X-Retry-After header, wait that many seconds and retry: the same number is in the body as `detail.retry_after`, and the limit clears once that window passes. The message in the body names the limit that was hit.

### 500

Something broke on our side

What to do: Retrying will not help. If it keeps happening, send us the X-Request-ID from the response headers.

### 529

Rate limit reached, or the endpoint is overloaded

What to do: Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

## Response envelope

Success: Array of objects (may be empty if no results)

Error: Error may coexist with partial results if it occurs mid-execution. Check X-Error header and status code.

Every response carries these headers:

- `X-Error` — Error message text (present only on error)
- `X-Request-ID` — Unique request identifier
- `X-Execution-Time` — Execution time in seconds
- `X-Result-Count` — How many records the body carries. 0 means an empty result, which is a normal answer and not by itself an error. A non-zero count can come back together with X-Error when the failure happened partway through — read this header and X-Error independently.
- `X-Total-Available-Results` — How many records exist for this query, when the endpoint can say. On a `dry_run` request this is the answer and the body is empty. It saturates: the endpoint's documented maximum means 'at least that many', any smaller number is exact.
- `X-Warning` — Present when the request body carried keys this endpoint does not document. They were ignored, so any filter you meant to apply through them did not apply. Check the spelling against this schema and retry.
- `X-Retry-After` — Seconds to wait before retrying. Present only on 429.