/rfi/articles

POST /api/rfi/articles

Price: 10 credits

Get one RFI story by its URL: headline, standfirst, body text, publication and update times, section breadcrumb, keywords and topic tags, bylines with the role RFI credits each contributor under, lead image with its caption and photo credit, in-body images, and — on the radio material RFI is built around — the broadcast audio with its MP3 address, running time, programme and episode identity. Works for news articles, agency wire copy, radio editions and video pages, in every one of RFI's seventeen language editions.

How to use it

Fetch one RFI story by its full URL or by the path after the host; the language and section segments are part of the address, so a bare slug does not resolve. audios carries the story's own broadcast — the MP3, its running time and the programme it went out under — and is empty on text-only news, so read it rather than inferring radio material from the section; a whole programme's back catalogue of MP3s comes from rfi/podcasts/episodes rather than from resolving each episode here. A broadcast bulletin can publish audio and a standfirst with no written body at all, so a null text is the source saying so, not a parse failure. Each tag carries its own language for rfi/tags/articles — pass the tag's language rather than the story's, because some editions file their stories under another edition's tags. The id here is RFI's content id and is not the guid rfi/feeds returns for the same story. Get URLs from rfi/feeds, rfi/sections/articles, rfi/tags/articles or rfi/podcasts/episodes.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• article string required — RFI article URL, or the same path without the host (examples: "https://www.rfi.fr/en/international/20260824-mediterranean-migrant-rescue-ships-threatened-by-libyan-groups-warns-ngo", "en/culture/20190124-who-stole-goyas-head-new-documentary-asks-questions-about-treatment-artists", "https://www.rfi.fr/fr/afrique/20260826-guinée-six-corps-découverts-dans-une-fosse-commune"; minLength: 1)

Response

• @type string (default: "RfiArticle")
• id string nullable
• article_title string required
• description string nullable
• text string nullable
• web_url string required
• language string required
• content_type string nullable
• published_at integer nullable
• updated_at integer nullable
• section string nullable
• sections array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "RfiSection")
  • name string required
  • web_url string required
• tags array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "RfiTag")
  • name string required
  • alias string required
  • web_url string required
  • language string nullable
• keywords array (default: [])
• authors array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "RfiAuthor")
  • name string required
  • role string nullable
  • profile_url string nullable
• dateline string nullable
• reading_time integer nullable
• word_count integer nullable
• image string nullable
• image_caption string nullable
• image_credit string nullable
• images array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "RfiImage")
  • image string required
  • caption string nullable
  • credit string nullable
  • alt string nullable
• audios array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "RfiAudio")
  • id string nullable
  • audio_url string required
  • duration integer nullable
  • audio_title string nullable
  • content_id string nullable
  • content_type string nullable
  • program_id string nullable
  • program_title string nullable
  • program_url string nullable
  • program_genre string nullable
  • season string nullable
  • season_episode string nullable
  • episode_id string nullable
  • episode_title string nullable
  • published_at integer nullable
  • published_label string nullable
  • web_url string nullable
• videos array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "RfiVideo")
  • video_url string nullable
  • thumbnail string nullable
  • duration integer nullable
  • video_title string nullable
  • video_description string nullable
  • uploaded_at integer nullable
• related_articles array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "RfiRelatedArticle")
  • article_title string required
  • web_url string required
• is_free boolean nullable

Errors

• 422 — Not an RFI content URL 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 — No RFI story at this URL, or the URL is a listing page rather than a story 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.