McMaster University

McMaster University Search API

Cross-entity keyword search over people, groups, labels and publications.

Documentation GitHub OpenAPI

Operations 1

GET /api/search Search across all indexed entity types #

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OpenAPI Specification

openapi: 3.2.0
info:
  title: McMaster Experts Search API
  version: '2026-09-01'
  summary: Public read-only JSON API behind McMaster University's researcher and expertise discovery gateway.
  description: McMaster Experts is McMaster University's researcher and expertise discovery gateway, operated by the university itself at experts.mcmaster.ca.
  contact:
    name: McMaster Experts
    url: https://experts.mcmaster.ca/about
  x-operator: institution
  x-operator-evidence: Host experts.mcmaster.ca is under McMaster University's own registrable domain mcmaster.ca. The application is bespoke (Next.js build, McMaster-specific `macid` field, McMaster group taxonomy) and matches no vendor research-information product.
  x-provenance:
    generated: '2026-09-01'
    method: probed
    source: https://experts.mcmaster.ca/api/search?q=nursing
servers:
- url: https://experts.mcmaster.ca
  description: Production. Observed live 2026-09-01.
security: []
tags:
- name: Search
  description: Cross-entity keyword search over people, groups, labels and publications.
paths:
  /api/search:
    get:
      operationId: search
      tags:
      - Search
      summary: Search across all indexed entity types
      description: Keyword search returning a mixed result set of groups (departments, centres, institutes), users, user labels and publications, ranked by Elasticsearch relevance score. Observed returning `total` 1114 for `q=nursing` on 2026-09-01.
      parameters:
      - name: q
        in: query
        required: true
        description: Free-text query. Echoed back in `params`.
        schema:
          type: string
        example: nursing
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Ranked mixed-entity result set.
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/SearchResponse'
        '500':
          description: Returned for an unrecognised value of a recognised parameter.
        '503':
          description: Returned by the edge under rapid sequential requests. Observed while probing; no documented rate limit exists. Back off and retry.
components:
  schemas:
    SearchHit:
      type: object
      required:
      - id
      - typeKey
      properties:
        id:
          type: string
          description: Opaque entity identifier. Numeric-as-string for publications, base64url-like for others.
        index:
          type: string
          description: Name of the backing Elasticsearch index, including its build timestamp.
          example: search_1788255001
        score:
          type: number
          description: Elasticsearch relevance score.
        nameHTML:
          type:
          - string
          - 'null'
          description: Display name with search-term highlighting markup.
        nameKey:
          type:
          - string
          - 'null'
          description: Plain display name.
        typeKey:
          type: string
          description: Entity type. Values observed while probing; the set is not published.
          examples:
          - group
          - user
          - user-label
          - publication
        typeNames:
          type: array
          items:
            type: string
          description: Human-readable type labels, most specific first.
        typeBoost:
          type: integer
          description: Ranking weight applied to this entity type.
        slug:
          type:
          - string
          - 'null'
          description: URL slug on experts.mcmaster.ca.
    SearchResponse:
      type: object
      required:
      - params
      - total
      - items
      properties:
        params:
          type: object
          description: Echo of the query parameters the service recognised.
          properties:
            q:
              type: string
        total:
          type: integer
          description: Total matching documents across all entity types.
          example: 1114
        items:
          type: array
          items:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/SearchHit'
x-method: generated

McMaster University Search API

Operations 1

Documentation

Specifications

Schemas & Data

Other Resources