UK Data AtlasAPI

Find boundaries for a date

Which local authority boundaries should you use for June 2023? Give a geography and a date and get an exact boundary release id back, along with the releases just before and after it.

get
/boundary-releases:resolve

Good to know

  • Add country to only consider releases that cover it.

Query parameters

  • geographystringrequired

    The geography to resolve a release for, e.g. ward.

  • datestringrequired

    A calendar date as YYYY-MM-DD, or a month as YYYY-MM.

  • countrystringoptional

    Restricts the answer to releases covering this country, so a Great Britain release is passed over for Northern Ireland.

    One ofGB-ENGGB-NIRGB-SCTGB-WLS

Returns

Envelope

The selected release, its neighbours and the basis of the choice.

  • apiVersionv1required
  • atlasReleasestringrequired

    The immutable /atlas-release releaseId for the artifacts that produced this response.

  • metaobjectrequired
    Show1 child field
    • nextCursorstring | nullrequired

      Opaque cursor for the next page, or null at the end.

When it goes wrong

  • 400A query parameter is malformed or its cursor is not valid for this result set.
  • 404No release can be selected: code is unsupported_geography for an unknown geography, otherwise no_release_for_date with absence saying whether the date precedes the first release, no release covers the country, or none is dated to a month.
  • 409Several releases share the selected month and differ in more than coverage; choices lists them.

Every error has the same shape. See Errors for how to handle them.

Technical notes

Show the precise behaviour

Returns the latest release of a geography dated on or before date that covers country when one is given, as an exact release id rather than a moving latest alias. Releases are snapshots dated to a month, so a day narrows nothing, and the answer is the latest snapshot at that date rather than a statement of which boundaries were legally in force. previous and next are the neighbouring releases covering the same country; a change after the selected release shows first in next. sameMonth is true when the date falls in the release's own month, so a change that month may lie either side of it. notCovering lists later releases passed over because they miss the country. Releases of the same month are told apart only where one is plainly better: a subset derived from another is set aside for its source, and without country a release covering fewer countries is set aside. Each is listed in setAside with its reason. Variants differing in any other way, such as clipping, are a 409 listing each in choices.