Getting started

This guide walks you through using the OpenDecisions API and understanding the schema. OpenDecisions exposes decision-relevant facts (institutions, programs, cost, outcomes) and derived "nutrition label" indexes via a read-only API, so you can build tools that help students and counselors compare options with clear provenance and uncertainty.

Prerequisites

• Access to an OpenDecisions API instance (e.g. local: http://localhost:8000 or your deployed URL)
• Optional: curl or a REST client for testing

1. Check API health

curl http://localhost:8000/health

Expected response:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "schema_version": "odg/v1"
}

2. Explore the root and v1 info

curl http://localhost:8000/
curl http://localhost:8000/v1/

The root returns API name, version, and links to OpenAPI docs (/api-docs, /api-redoc, /openapi.json).

3. List institutions

curl "http://localhost:8000/v1/institutions?limit=5"

Response is paginated: items, total, limit, offset. Each item conforms to the OpenDecisions Institution type.

4. Get a single institution

Use an institution ID from the list (e.g. inst:us:ipeds:166027 for Harvard):

curl "http://localhost:8000/v1/institutions/inst:us:ipeds:166027"

5. Other v1 endpoints

All list endpoints support limit and offset for pagination.

Next steps

• Read the Schema reference to understand types and fields.
• Use the API reference for detailed endpoint behavior and response shapes.