Querying the CTAN Database with JSON – List of Topics

The list of topics can be obtained under the URL

http://www.ctan.org/json/1.1/topics

The result is an XML file as in the following listing:

[{"key":"abbrev","details":"macros for defining abbreviations in documents"},
 {"key":"abstract","details":"typeset abstracts of documents"},
 {"key":"accessible","details":"accessibility support"},
 {"key":"acrobat","details":"relies on availability of Adobe Acrobat, etc."},
 {"key":"acronym","details":"define and use acronyms"},
 {"key":"addr-list","details":"lists of addresses, for a personal directory (or the like)"},
 {"key":"advert","details":"small advertisements, fly sheets, etc."},
 {"key":"albanian","details":"support for typesetting Albanian"},
 {"key":"alignment","details":"tables, tab structures, etc"},
 {"key":"alignment-supp","details":"ancillary code for tables, tab structures, etc"},
 {"key":"amharic","details":"support for typesetting Amharic"},
 {"key":"apa","details":"typesetting according to the rules of the American Psychological Association"},
 {"key":"appendix","details":"Typsetting and using appendices"},
 {"key":"arabic","details":"documentation in and support for typesetting Arabic"},   
  … }]  

The topics contained in this list are ordered ascending on the key of the topic.

topic

Each topic is represented as JSON object. This object has several attributes:

key

This attribute contains the key of the topic. This attribute is mandatory.

details

This attribute contains a short descriptive text about the meaning of the topic.

Selecting

The list can be restricted to contain part of the topics only. The condition is that the key starts with a given string. This string is specified with the parameter key.

http://www.ctan.org/json/1.1/topics?key=abbrev

The following example extracts all topics for which the key starts with the letter n:

http://www.ctan.org/json/1.1/topics?key=n