Aurweb RPC interface
The Aurweb RPC interface is a lightweight RPC interface for the AUR. Queries are sent as HTTP GET requests and the server responds with JSON.
API usage
Query types
There are two query types:
- search
- info
search
Package searches can be performed by issuing requests of the form:
/rpc/?v=5&type=search&by=field&arg=keywords
where keywords is the search argument and field is one of the following values:
-
name(search by package name only) -
name-desc(search by package name and description) -
maintainer(search by package maintainer) -
depends(search for packages that depend on keywords) -
makedepends(search for packages that makedepend on keywords) -
optdepends(search for packages that optdepend on keywords) -
checkdepends(search for packages that checkdepend on keywords)
The by parameter can be skipped and defaults to name-desc.
Possible return types are search and error.
If a maintainer search is performed and the search argument is left empty, a list of orphan packages is returned.
Examples:
Search for foobar:
https://aur.archlinux.org/rpc/?v=5&type=search&arg=foobar
Search for packages maintained by john:
https://aur.archlinux.org/rpc/?v=5&type=search&by=maintainer&arg=john
Search for packages that have foobar as `makedepends`:
https://aur.archlinux.org/rpc/?v=5&type=search&by=makedepends&arg=foobar
Search with callback:
https://aur.archlinux.org/rpc/?v=5&type=search&arg=foobar&callback=jsonp1192244621103
info
Package information can be performed by issuing requests of the form:
/rpc/?v=5&type=info&arg[]=pkg1&arg[]=pkg2&…
where pkg1, pkg2, … are the exact matches of names of packages to retrieve package details for.
Possible return types are multiinfo and error.
Examples:
Info for single foobar package:
https://aur.archlinux.org/rpc/?v=5&type=info&arg[]=foobar
Info for multiple foobar and bar packages:
https://aur.archlinux.org/rpc/?v=5&type=info&arg[]=foobar&arg[]=bar
Return types
The return payload is of one format and currently has three main types. The response will always return a type so that the user can determine if the result of an operation was an error or not.
The format of the return payload is:
{"version":5,"type":ReturnType,"resultcount":0,"results":ReturnData}
ReturnType is a string, and the value is one of:
searchmultiinfoerror
return data
The type of ReturnData is an array of dictionary objects for the search and multiinfo ReturnType, and an empty array for error ReturnType.
For the ReturnType search, ReturnData may contain the following fields:
IDNamePackageBaseIDPackageBaseVersionDescriptionURLNumVotesPopularityOutOfDateMaintainerFirstSubmittedLastModifiedURLPath
For the ReturnType info and multiinfo, ReturnData may additionally contain the following fields:
DependsMakeDependsOptDependsCheckDependsConflictsProvidesReplacesGroupsLicenseKeywords
Fields that a package does not contain will be omitted from the output.
error
The error type has an error response string as the return value. An error response can be returned from either a search or an info query type.
Example of ReturnType error:
{"version":5,"type":"error","resultcount":0,"results":[],"error":"Incorrect by field specified."}
search
The search type is the result returned from a search request operation.
Example of ReturnType search:
{"version":5,"type":"search","resultcount":2,"results":[{"ID":206807,"Name":"cower-git", ...}]}
info
The info type is the result returned from an info request operation.
Example of ReturnType multiinfo:
{
"version":5,
"type":"multiinfo",
"resultcount":1,
"results":[{
"ID":229417,
"Name":"cower",
"PackageBaseID":44921,
"PackageBase":"cower",
"Version":"14-2",
"Description":"A simple AUR agent with a pretentious name",
"URL":"http:\/\/github.com\/falconindy\/cower",
"NumVotes":590,
"Popularity":24.595536,
"OutOfDate":null,
"Maintainer":"falconindy",
"FirstSubmitted":1293676237,
"LastModified":1441804093,
"URLPath":"\/cgit\/aur.git\/snapshot\/cower.tar.gz",
"Depends":[
"curl",
"openssl",
"pacman",
"yajl"
],
"MakeDepends":[
"perl"
],
"License":[
"MIT"
],
"Keywords":[]
}]
}
jsonp
If you are working with a javascript page, and need a JSON callback mechanism, you can do it. You just need to provide an additional callback variable. This callback is usually handled via the javascript library, but here is an example.
Example Query:
https://aur.archlinux.org/rpc/?v=5&type=search&arg=foobar&callback=jsonp1192244621103
Example Result:
/**/jsonp1192244621103({"version":5,"type":"search","resultcount":1,"results":[{"ID":250608,"Name":"foobar2000","PackageBaseID":37068,"PackageBase":"foobar2000","Version":"1.3.9-1","Description":"An advanced freeware audio player (uses Wine).","URL":"http:\/\/www.foobar2000.org\/","NumVotes":39,"Popularity":0.425966,"OutOfDate":null,"Maintainer":"supermario","FirstSubmitted":1273255356,"LastModified":1448326415,"URLPath":"\/cgit\/aur.git\/snapshot\/foobar2000.tar.gz"}]})
This would automatically call the JavaScript function jsonp1192244621103 with the parameter set to the results of the RPC call.
Limitations
- HTTP GET requests are limited to URI of 8190 bytes maximum length. However, the official AUR instance running on a nginx server with HTTP/2 uses the default URI maximum length limit of 4443 bytes. Info requests with more than about 200 packages as an argument will need to be split.
- Search queries must be at least two characters long.
- Searches will fail if they contain 5000 or more results.
- The API rate is limited to a maximum of 4000 requests per day per IP.
Reference clients
Sometimes things are easier to understand with examples. A few reference implementations (jQuery, python, ruby) are available at the following URL: https://github.com/cactus/random/tree/2b72a1723bfc8ae64eed6a3c40cb154accae3974/aurjson_examples