Article Edit | History | Editors

BGG XML API RSS Feed

Introduction

XML_API_Terms_of_Use

You can access some information from the geek via the BoardGameGeek XML API. Each base URI is described and the various parameters are listed. The parameters and their values are URL-encoded in the standard manner. There are some examples at the end. The resultant output XML is not described here, but XML is "self-describing" right? The output should be quite clear from simple inspection.

For all of the parameters mentioned below, the first parameter you list follows a ? (question mark), and each subsequent parameter follows an & (ampersand).

Related wikis: Data Mining, and BGG XML API2

Usage Notes

Note: BGG throttles the requests now, which is to say that if you send requests too frequently, the server will give you 500 or 503 return codes, reporting that it is too busy. Currently, a 5-second wait between requests seems to suffice.

Commands

Search for games by name and by AKAs

/xmlapi/search

Retrieve information about a particular game or games

/xmlapi/boardgame/<gameid>
/xmlapi/boardgame/<gameid>,<gameid2>[...]

Retrieve games in a user's collection

/xmlapi/collection/<username>
Retrieve games in a user's collection. Important definition: A user's collection includes any games the user has added to her collection on BGG. This includes games she owns, games she used to own, games she's rated, games upon which she's commented, games she's played, and games on her wishlist, just to name a few. In this section, references to the collection mean this broader sense of BGG collection, not the user's personal stash of games.

The XMLAPI will place requests for geeklists and user collections into a queue to be processed by backend servers. When this happens, the request will result in an HTTP response of 202 to indicate the request has been queued and is pending processing. These collection requests will result in an HTTP response of 200 along with the XML data once the server has the data available (See Export collections has been updated (XMLAPI developers read this) for details).

Retrieve the messages from a forum/game thread

/xmlapi/thread/<threadid>

  • Example: https://boardgamegeek.com/xmlapi/thread/381021 [Note: Your browser may interpret this as a request to subscribe to an RSS feed.]
  • start: Start article (default = 0)
  • count: Number of articles (default and max = 100)
  • username: Username to filter for

Retrieve entries from a geeklist

/xmlapi/geeklist/<listid>

Note: the old "start" and "count" parameters are obsolete and no longer supported. They were required in the original api if you wanted to retreive all items on a geeklist longer than 150 items as that's the most that could be returned on a single api call. Currently however the geeklist xml api returns the entire geeklist (all items) in a single call.

Games Data XML Snapshot

BGG XML Snapshot

Known XML API Users

XML API Bugs & Enhancement Requests

XML API Enhancements

[What Links Here]