Getting updated date for all the endpoints through an API

Question

I am trying to build a code that download all files from the provided end points. However, I do not want to download the files everytime and will only download the files if the data in the endpoints is changed/added. I assume that this is provided by the "last_updated" field in the JSON as shown in the API reference JSON snippet - https://open.fda.gov/api/reference/. What is the URL that provides me similar JSON output?

Thanks a lot Hans. That helped. Glad to see active participation in the community. — Pratik Kulkarni, Jun 25 '16 at 07:09
Please don't add "thank you" as an answer. Once you have sufficient reputation, you will be able to vote up questions and answers that you found helpful. - From Review — philshem, Jun 25 '16 at 14:55

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 24 '16 at 17:50

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The endpoint for downloads is: https://api.fda.gov/download.json

I would log a bug on https://github.com/FDA/open.fda.gov letting them know that the above endpoint should be documented.

answered Jun 24 '16 at 17:50

Hans Nelsen

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 24 '16 at 12:38

Confusing indeed -- the site doesn't appear to provide a query URL to get the provided JSON output, as you noticed.

For now, it seems like your best bet might be paginating through AWS S3 directory listings available at http://download.open.fda.gov/ and looking at each <Content>'s <Key> and <LastModified> timestamp.

Getting updated date for all the endpoints through an API

2 Answers2