/docs/api-reference

API Reference

Interact with the 1990 Web Archive programmatically. Access millions of preserved pages, submit new URLs for archival, and query historical web data through our RESTful API.

Overview

The 1990 Web Archive API provides a consistent, versioned interface to our preservation database. All requests must be made over HTTPS. Calls made over plain HTTP will fail. API requests without authentication will also fail.

Base URL

https://api.1990webarchive.com/v1

Current version: v1.4.2. We follow semantic versioning and will never break backward compatibility within a major version.

Authentication

The API uses Bearer token authentication. You can generate API keys from your dashboard. Include your token in the Authorization header.

cURL

curl -X GET https://api.1990webarchive.com/v1/pages \n  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

JavaScript

const response = await fetch('https://api.1990webarchive.com/v1/pages', {
  headers: { 'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_API_KEY' }
});

⚠️ Never expose your API keys in client-side code or public repositories. Use environment variables or a backend proxy.

Rate Limits

To ensure fair usage, the API enforces rate limits based on your subscription tier.

Header	Description
`X-RateLimit-Limit`	Max requests per window
`X-RateLimit-Remaining`	Remaining requests in current window
`X-RateLimit-Reset`	Unix timestamp when the window resets

Exceeding limits returns 429 Too Many Requests. Implement exponential backoff for retries.

Endpoints

GET /v1/pages

Retrieve a paginated list of archived web pages. Supports filtering by era, domain, and status.

Query Parameters

Name	Type	Description
page	integer	Page number (default: 1)
per_page	integer	Results per page (max: 100)
era	string	Filter by decade: `1990s`, `2000s`
status	string	`preserved`, `partial`, `failed`

Response 200

{
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "pg_8a9b2c3d4e",
      "url": "http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/9842",
      "archived_at": "1998-11-14T08:22:00Z",
      "status": "preserved",
      "mime_type": "text/html",
      "size_bytes": 14200
    }
  ],
  "pagination": {
    "page": 1,
    "per_page": 25,
    "total": 4218902
  }
}

GET /v1/pages/:id

Fetch complete metadata and raw HTML content for a specific archived page.

Response 200

{
  "id": "pg_8a9b2c3d4e",
  "url": "http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/9842",
  "original_content": "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN\">\n<html>\n<head>\n  <title>Welcome to My Page</title>\n</head>\n<body bgcolor=\"#000080\" text=\"#00FF00\">\n  <h1>You made it!</h1>\n</body>\n</html>",
  "metadata": {
    "archived_at": "1998-11-14T08:22:00Z",
    "server": "Netscape-Enterprise/2.01",
    "encoding": "iso-8859-1"
  }
}

POST /v1/archive

Submit a URL for immediate archival. The request is asynchronous; poll the returned job_id for status.

Request Body

Name	Type	Required	Description
url	string	Required	Full HTTP/HTTPS URL to archive
wait_render	boolean		Wait for JS execution before snapshot
tags	string[]		Custom metadata tags

cURL

curl -X POST https://api.1990webarchive.com/v1/archive \n  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \n  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \n  -d '{"url": "https://example.com", "tags": ["research", "1998"]}'

GET /v1/search

Full-text search across archived HTML content and metadata. Supports boolean operators and era-specific tokenization.

Query parameter q accepts standard search syntax. Use site:domain.com or year:1995 for scoped queries.

Pagination

Lists support offset-based pagination. All list endpoints return a pagination object.

{
  "page": 2,
  "per_page": 50,
  "total": 12500,
  "has_next": true,
  "has_prev": true
}

Error Handling

The API uses conventional HTTP status codes and returns JSON error details.

Code	Meaning	Details
400	Bad Request	Invalid parameters or malformed JSON
401	Unauthorized	Missing or invalid API key
403	Forbidden	Insufficient permissions for this resource
404	Not Found	Resource does not exist or was purged
429	Rate Limited	Too many requests. Check rate limit headers
500	Server Error	Internal archive failure. Retry with backoff

Error Response Format

{
  "error": {
    "code": "invalid_parameter",
    "message": "URL must include a valid http or https scheme",
    "details": {"field": "url"}
  }
}

SDKs & Tools

Official libraries for rapid integration:

🐍 pip install 1990-archive-python
📦 npm install @1990archive/node-sdk
🐙 go get github.com/1990archive/go-archive

Community tools and Postman collections are available on our GitHub organization.