Guides / how-to-connect-datavic-api-australia
How to connect the DataVic open data API (CKAN)
Victorian Government
Victoria's open-data catalogue runs on CKAN at discover.data.vic.gov.au. The main www.data.vic.gov.au site is a separate front end, so point code at the discover host. Public reads need no key; a box check on 16 Oct 2026 counted 5,607 packages.
Find datasets with package_search (for example q=bushfire). Many CSV resources are loaded into the CKAN datastore, shown by datastore_active: true on the resource. For those you can query rows directly with datastore_search?resource_id=…&limit=… instead of downloading the whole file. Licences vary by dataset, so read license_id on each one.
Don't use status_show as a health check here, because it returns HTTP 400. For Victorian maps and boundaries, see VicMap GeoServer.
Steps
- Find the base URL. Use
https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/api/3/action/package_search— docs at https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/api/3/action/help_show?name=package_search. - Auth. Catalogued as Open read — none for public read.
- Try an example request.
curl -s 'https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/api/3/action/package_search?rows=1' - Licence. Unknown — not stated by the publisher. Read the publisher terms before production use.
- Agent notes. Live 2026-08-23: 5,596 packages, 81 orgs (full list, not the 25-row cap), 16 groups. www.data.vic.gov.au is the Drupal front door (not CKAN). status_show is HTTP 400 — do not use it as a liveness check. Magda /api/v0 paths 404.
- base
- https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/api/3/action/package_search
- docs
- https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/api/3/action/help_show?name=package_search
- protocol
- CKAN
- auth
- Open read — none for public read
- licence
- Licence unclear
- try
- curl -s 'https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/api/3/action/package_search?rows=1'
- checked
- 2026-10-15 · 200 OK · 621 ms