DataStream

About DataStream

DataStream provides a public API for accessing water quality and environmental monitoring data, built on the OData JSON Format v4 (ISO/IEC 20802-2) standard. The API exposes endpoints for dataset-level metadata, monitoring locations, observations, and raw records, with filtering by criteria such as DOI, location, activity dates, and characteristic name. Data retrieved through the API is expected to be cited, with citation, licence, and DOI information available via the /Metadata endpoint.

The repository documents API key access, endpoint usage, and best practices for querying, including URL encoding of query parameters, partitioning large requests (over 1M rows) by monitoring location or activity start year, paginating results, and rate-limiting requests to 2 per second. Separate QA and production API endpoints are provided, and browser-based access requires domain whitelisting for CORS; only GET requests are supported for browser use, while other applications authenticate via an x-api-key header.

Client modules are available for R, Python, JavaScript, and Shell to simplify API integration. The documentation is intended for developers and organizations building applications or scripts that consume environmental monitoring datasets from DataStream.

Key features

• OData JSON Format v4 (ISO/IEC 20802-2) public API for water monitoring data
• Endpoints for dataset metadata, monitoring locations, observations, and raw records
• Official client modules for R, Python, JavaScript, and Shell
• Pagination via Link header or @odata.nextLink for large result sets
• CORS whitelisting available for browser-based GET requests
• API key authentication via the x-api-key header

Frequently asked questions