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The Family Information API lets you explore Buckinghamshire Council’s directory of local community services, childcare and other things to do.

This API and its underlying data representation is a partial implementation of the Open Referral UK standard.

We’re releasing the data under an Open Government license.

Get started:

1. Understand how to make requests
2. Search the list of services
3. Get a specific service

Where does the data come from?

The data comes from three main sources:

• Lists of services held by Buckinghamshire Council
• Updates made by members of the public who maintain a service
• Lists of Ofsted-inspected childcare services

The data is updated regularly by council staff and members of the public, but we can’t guarantee that it will always be accurate.

Only data that is normally publicly visible can be explored through the API.

Deploying the API

Uses:

• expressJS API
• uses an atlas MongoDB
• Google cloud platform

Deployment checklist

ENV VAR	Value	Description	Service
DB_URI	mongodb+srv://<USERNAME>:<PASSWORD>@<INSTANCE>/<USERNAME>?retryWrites=true&w=majority	Provided by Atlas MongoDB Atlas	MongoDB
GOOGLE_API_KEY		used for geocoding from location= parameters. Needs the geocoding API enabled.	See Google maps

MongoDB Atlas

• create a project
• staging: M0 sandbox will do
• Dont forget to name it (the option hidden at the bottom) project-outpost-env
• under security > database access - give user role atlasAdmin

Google maps

What you will need to create

Don’t forget to make the staging and dev ones - never use the wrong ones in the wrong environment.

• outpost_api_service_geocode_prod, outpost_api_service_geocode_dev, outpost_api_service_geocode_staging
  • AKA GOOGLE_API_KEY
  • APIs:
    • Geocode API
  • Restrictions:
    • None