/guardian/authors/search

POST /api/guardian/authors/search

Price: 20 credits

Browse the full Guardian contributor catalogue alphabetically. Returns every writer filed under the requested index bucket — a letter a-z, or 1-9 for names starting with a digit — with their profile id, display name, alias and profile url.

How to use it

List Guardian writers alphabetically without knowing their slugs: pick a bucket, get every contributor filed under it (thousands per letter, so set count). Names starting with a digit sit in the 1-9 bucket rather than under any letter. Feed id ('profile/rafaelbehr') into guardian/authors for the bio, or into guardian/tags/articles for their articles.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• letter string required — Index bucket to list: a letter a-z, or 1-9 for names starting with a digit (one of: "1-9", "a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i", "j", "k", "l", "m", "n", "o", "p", "q", "r", "s", "t", "u", "v", "w", "x", "y", "z")
• count integer required — Max number of contributors to return (min: 1)

Response

• @type string (default: "GuardianAuthorIndexEntry")
• id string required
• name string required
• alias string required
• profile_url string required

Errors

• 422 — The request body did not validate Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.
• 408 — The request ran past its time limit 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 — The entity was not found, or a precondition failed 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 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 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 Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

Response 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.