data.gov.il CKAN API beginner's guide — what it is, how it works, when to use it
With any new API, the hardest part is figuring out what it actually does and where it's useful. Let's start there.
What is data.gov.il CKAN API?
Official gateway to all Israeli government open data — vehicles, education, health, transport and more.
data.gov.il is Israel's official open-data portal, powered by CKAN — a free open-source platform originally built by the UK government. The API lets any developer pull hundreds of Israeli datasets in real time, with no signup and no key, at reasonable rate limits. It is arguably the single most important API for anyone building products around Israeli data.
Who it's for
- Startups building vehicle, real-estate or transport products
- Data journalists and researchers
- Civic-tech developers
- Students and capstone projects
A first example
Here is the shortest path to seeing something work:
curl "https://data.gov.il/api/3/action/datastore_search?resource_id=053cea08-09bc-40ec-8f7a-156f0677aff3&limit=5"When to use it, when not to
data.gov.il CKAN API is a great fit for most of what it covers, but not every case. If you only need small, static data once or twice, it may be simpler to download and cache locally. For real products that need fresh data, the API is the way.