LCBO API

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is it free?

Absolutely! There is no desire or intention to charge for the use of the API. I only ask that you tell me about what you are making with it. It costs roughly $50/month to host the project, donations are greatly appreciated!

Where does the data come from?

Why, from the LCBO of course! Their website is periodically crawled to get up-to-date information. Search engines like Google and Bing use this same technique to index web pages.

Why did you do this?

I feel that publicly available information should be free and accessible in as many ways as possible. I want to see what individuals will do with this information when presented with it in an accessible format… and I wanted an LCBO app for my iPhone. Read the about section for more information.

Can you add barcode information products, please?

I do not currently have access to barcode information for all products that the LCBO stocks. I understand how useful barcode data would be for products and if this ever changes it will certainly be announced on @lcboapi’s Twitter account.

Can you add XML as a response format?

No, because JSON is a much better format for the output of this API.

I’m a geek, how does it work?

Is it open source?

The parser is open source, my intention is to eventually open source the API service too in the future. Here are the current open source contributions: