Querying the CTAN Database with JSON – Topic

The information about a single topic can be obtained under the URL like

http://www.ctan.org/json/1.3/topic/cv

The last element in the URl is the key of the topic as used by CTAN. Those keys are also listed in the list of topics.

The result is a JSON object as in the following listing:

{"key":"cv","details":"curriculum vitae/Resumé"}  

The entry has several attributes:

key

This attribute contains the key of the author. This attribute is mandatory.

details

This attribute contains a short description of the topic.

References

You can request that more information about the topics is provided. This information is the list of packages in which the topic is mentioned. This is accomplished with the parameter ref. It can be set to true as in the following example:

http://www.ctan.org/json/1.3/topic/cv?ref=true

This results in a JSON object like in the following listing;

{"key":"cv",
 "details":"curriculum vitae/Resumé",
 "references":["currvita","cvsty","cv","curve","ecv","esieecv","europecv","harnon-cv","ibmres-tex","koma-moderncvclassic","moderntimeline","mycv","moderncv","resumemac","res","simplecv","translation-ecv-de","translation-europecv-de","tucv","vita","vita209","resumecls","cv4tw","pas-cv"]}  

In this case the attribute references contains a list of package keys. The keys are unique and sorted alphabetically.