Querying the CTAN Database with JSON – List of Authors

The list of authors can be obtained under the URL

http://www.ctan.org/json/1.3/authors

The result is a JSON list as in the following listing:

[{"key":"aakerlund","givenname":"Johan","familyname":"Aakerlund"},
 {"key":"aas","givenname":"American Astronomical Society","familyname":""},
 {"key":"aavatsmark","givenname":"Ivar","familyname":"Aavatsmark"},
 {"key":"abhinandan","givenname":"S. P.","familyname":"Abhinandan"},
 {"key":"abraham","givenname":"Paul","familyname":"Abraham"},
 {"key":"abrahams","givenname":"Paul W.","familyname":"Abrahams"},
 …  

The authors contained in this list are ordered ascending on the key of the author.

List item

Each author in contained within a JSON object. This object has several attributes:

key

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

title

This attribute is the title of the author. It is optional and can be empty. The default is empty.

givenname

This attribute contains the given name. It is optional and can be empty.

von

This attribute is the von part of the author's name. It is usually in lower case and has values like von, van, or de. It is optional and can be empty. The default is empty.

familyname

This attribute is the family name. It is optional and can be empty.

junior

This attribute is the junior part of the author's name. It is usually an addition to the name like jr., sr., or a numeral like I, II, III, IV. It is optional and can be empty. The default is empty.

pseudonym

This attribute is the alias name to protect the privacy of an author who requests it. It is optional and can be empty. The default is empty. In case this attribute is not empty the other name constituents are not shown.

female

This attribute is the boolean indicator that the author is female. It is optional and can be empty. The default is false.

died

This attribute is the indicator that the author is deceased. It is optional and can be empty. The default is empty.

Note that the authors information does not contain the email address of the author to protect the privacy.

Selecting

The list can be restricted to contain part of the authors 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/1.3/authors?key=knuth

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

http://www.ctan.org/json/1.3/authors?key=n