Princeton University
Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Its programmable footprint is real but almost entirely the work of one unit — Princeton University Library — and it is one of the few institutions in this cohort that operates its own machine-readable contract rather than a vendor's. The Library publishes an OpenAPI 3.1.1 document for its Allsearch API at allsearch-api.princeton.edu, serves a Swagger UI alongside it, open-sources the application behind it, and runs a family of unauthenticated Blacklight JSON endpoints across the catalog, digital collections, finding aids, maps and the Princeton Data Commons research-data portal. The Art Museum runs a separate open, no-authentication collections API documented in prose on GitHub. Princeton also operates its own Shibboleth identity provider with published SAML 2.0 metadata, an OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint on Figgy, and DataCite DOI registration under three of its own repository clients. Everything outside the Library is gated: the OIT enterprise gateway at api.princeton.edu runs WSO2 API Manager behind NetID or service-account OAuth2, and the developer portal that used to front it, api-store.princeton.edu, no longer resolves at all. Course, registrar, dining and directory data exist as APIs but are not reachable by anyone without a Princeton credential, so no public course-catalog surface is claimed here. Princeton's teaching and library-discovery layers are vendor tenancies — Canvas and Ex Libris Alma/Primo — and are recorded as relationships, not as Princeton contracts.
Princeton University publishes 2 APIs on the APIs.io network: Library Allsearch API and Art Museum API. Tagged areas include University, Higher Education, Education, Ivy League, and United States.
The Princeton University catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.
Princeton University’s developer surface includes API reference, authentication, and 22 more developer resources.
14 APIs
UniversityHigher EducationEducationIvy LeagueUnited StatesNew JerseyResearch LibraryResearch DataOpen DataDigital CollectionsIdentity FederationMuseum
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.
Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.
Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.
Example request and response payloads for these APIs.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
OAuth scopes governing access to this provider's APIs.
aid: princeton
name: Princeton University
description: 'Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Its programmable
footprint is real but almost entirely the work of one unit — Princeton University Library — and it is one of the few institutions
in this cohort that operates its own machine-readable contract rather than a vendor''s. The Library publishes an OpenAPI
3.1.1 document for its Allsearch API at allsearch-api.princeton.edu, serves a Swagger UI alongside it, open-sources the
application behind it, and runs a family of unauthenticated Blacklight JSON endpoints across the catalog, digital collections,
finding aids, maps and the Princeton Data Commons research-data portal. The Art Museum runs a separate open, no-authentication
collections API documented in prose on GitHub. Princeton also operates its own Shibboleth identity provider with published
SAML 2.0 metadata, an OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint on Figgy, and DataCite DOI registration under three of its own repository clients.
Everything outside the Library is gated: the OIT enterprise gateway at api.princeton.edu runs WSO2 API Manager behind NetID
or service-account OAuth2, and the developer portal that used to front it, api-store.princeton.edu, no longer resolves at
all. Course, registrar, dining and directory data exist as APIs but are not reachable by anyone without a Princeton credential,
so no public course-catalog surface is claimed here. Princeton''s teaching and library-discovery layers are vendor tenancies
— Canvas and Ex Libris Alma/Primo — and are recorded as relationships, not as Princeton contracts.'
x-type: university
x-category: Private Research University
x-operator-summary:
institution: 12
tenant: 2
vendor: 0
placeholder: 0
x-enrichment:
date: '2026-08-19'
status: enriched
pass: university-pipeline-v1
artifacts_added: 16
note: Re-profiled under the university pipeline after the June 2026 cohort pass. The June profile missed Princeton's only
published OpenAPI (the Library's Allsearch API), missed the Shibboleth IdP metadata, missed the Figgy OAI-PMH endpoint
and the Princeton Data Commons portal, recorded a DeveloperPortal host that no longer resolves, and misread Princeton's
own ALTCHA bot challenge on DataSpace as an authentication requirement. All four are corrected here.
x-coverage:
state: covered
reason: null
detail: 'Twelve institution-operated surfaces were reached and confirmed with real probes, including a live OpenAPI 3.1.1
document, a SAML 2.0 EntityDescriptor and an OAI-PMH 2.0 Identify response. Two areas were NOT readable and are declared
rather than guessed at. First, every Drupal-hosted princeton.edu marketing site — library.princeton.edu, oit.princeton.edu,
ai.princeton.edu, researchcomputing.princeton.edu — sits behind a Cloudflare JS interstitial that returns 403 to every
non-browser client, including with full browser headers, so no AIPolicy or ResearchComputing pointer is emitted even though
those programmes plainly exist. Second, dataspace.princeton.edu answers 401 with Princeton''s own in-house ALTCHA proof-of-work
challenge; the repository and its OAI-PMH endpoint are live behind it and the June 2026 note calling this "requires authentication"
was wrong. Both are blocks on our side, not gaps in Princeton''s publishing. The OIT gateway''s 401 IS a real institutional
gate and is recorded as such. princeton.figshare.com was probed and rejected: a nonsense subdomain returns the same empty
202 from the same load balancer, so there is no Figshare tenancy to record here.'
evidence:
- url: https://allsearch-api.princeton.edu/api-docs/v1/swagger.yaml
status: 200
- url: https://idp.princeton.edu/idp/shibboleth
status: 200
- url: https://figgy.princeton.edu/oai?verb=Identify
status: 200
- url: https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog.json?q=climate
status: 200
- url: https://data.artmuseum.princeton.edu/objects/9449
status: 200
- url: https://api.princeton.edu/active-directory/1.0.6/users
status: 401
- url: https://api-store.princeton.edu/store/
status: 0
- url: https://dataspace.princeton.edu/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
status: 401
- url: https://ai.princeton.edu/
status: 403
- url: https://library.princeton.edu/
status: 403
- url: https://allsearch-api.princeton.edu/llms.txt
status: 200
note: FALSE CREDIT, ruled out. The Allsearch API has a catch-all that answers any unknown path with its root identity
document, so llms.txt and .well-known/api-catalog both return 200 without existing. A control probe of /totally-fake-xyz789
returns the identical body. No agent-surface artifact is claimed for this provider.
- url: https://princeton.figshare.com/
status: 202
note: FALSE CREDIT, ruled out. nosuchschool-xyz123.figshare.com returns the same empty 202 from the same awselb/2.0 load
balancer. Not a Princeton Figshare tenancy.
checked: '2026-08-19'
type: Index
accessModel:
pricing: free
onboarding: unknown
trial: false
try_now: true
public: true
label: Free
confidence: high
source:
- probed
generated: '2026-08-19'
method: probed
note: 'Upgraded from `public: false` after probing. The Library''s APIs are anonymously callable with no key, no registration
and no rate-limit challenge; the OIT gateway remains NetID-gated.'
position: Provider
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/princeton.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/princeton/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- University
- Higher Education
- Education
- Ivy League
- United States
- New Jersey
- Research Library
- Research Data
- Open Data
- Digital Collections
- Identity Federation
- Museum
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: princeton:allsearch-api
name: Princeton University Library Allsearch API
x-operator: institution
description: 'The backend API for allsearch.princeton.edu, Princeton University Library''s federated search. Fourteen operations
fan one uniform envelope — number, records, more — across the catalog, articles, the Art Museum, digital collections,
finding aids, journals, databases, LibGuides, LibAnswers, maps, library staff, the library website, best bets and a site
banner. Public, anonymous, no key. This is the only OpenAPI document Princeton publishes: OpenAPI 3.1.1, served by the
application itself at /api-docs/v1/swagger.yaml with a Swagger UI at /api-docs, generated from the application''s own
request specs and open-sourced as pulibrary/allsearch_api. All fourteen operations carry an operationId, summary, description
and tags, and all thirty-two response media types carry an example. It declares no components, no securitySchemes and
no root tag definitions, and info.contact is absent. Errors return a named problem code — {"error":{"problem":"QUERY_IS_EMPTY","message":…}}.'
humanURL: https://allsearch-api.princeton.edu/api-docs
baseURL: https://allsearch-api.princeton.edu
tags:
- Library
- Search
- Discovery
- Open Data
- JSON
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/princeton-allsearch-api-openapi.yml
- type: APIReference
url: https://allsearch-api.princeton.edu/api-docs
- type: Documentation
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/allsearch_api
- type: GitHubRepository
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/allsearch_api
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/princeton-allsearch-search-response.json
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/princeton-allsearch-error.json
- type: Examples
url: examples/princeton-allsearch-catalog-search-200.json
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/princeton-authentication.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
url: errors/princeton-errors.yml
- type: SpectralRules
url: rules/princeton-openapi-spectral-rules.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/princeton-conformance.yml
- type: Website
url: https://allsearch.princeton.edu/
- aid: princeton:art-museum-api
name: Princeton University Art Museum API
x-operator: institution
description: 'Open, REST-style API providing developer access to data about the Princeton University Art Museum and its
collections. Four surfaces: objects (with a label-level /tombstone sub-resource and filtering by maker, department, term
and on-view status), makers, packages, and a full-text search endpoint that returns the raw Elasticsearch envelope. Pagination
and incremental harvesting are supported via size, from, sort, sortorder and lastupdated. No authentication is currently
required, though the Museum documents that this may change. Weekly-refreshed static JSON dumps of the whole collection
are offered alongside the API for bulk and machine-learning use. The Museum publishes prose documentation, not a contract;
the OpenAPI in this repo is DERIVED from that documentation and verified against live responses, and is not Princeton''s
own artifact.'
humanURL: https://github.com/Princeton-University-Art-Museum/puam-api-docs
baseURL: https://data.artmuseum.princeton.edu
tags:
- Museum
- Collection
- Open Data
- IIIF
- JSON
tags_raw:
- Museum
- Collections
- Open Data
- IIIF
- JSON
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/princeton-art-museum-api-openapi.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://github.com/Princeton-University-Art-Museum/puam-api-docs
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/Princeton-University-Art-Museum
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/princeton-art-museum-object.json
- type: Examples
url: examples/princeton-art-museum-tombstone-200.json
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/princeton-authentication.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
url: errors/princeton-errors.yml
- aid: princeton:oit-api-gateway
name: Princeton OIT API Gateway
x-operator: institution
description: 'Princeton''s Office of Information Technology enterprise API gateway, running WSO2 API Manager. Fronts institutional
APIs — ActiveDirectory user and group lookups, PrincetonInfo departmental data, a MobileApp surface carrying course, dining
and campus places data, and the LibAlma patron feed the Library consumes. Every call requires a bearer token obtained
through a NetID or departmental service-account subscription, so the surface is real but invisible to the public: anonymous
requests return 401 with an empty body. The API Store developer portal that used to front it, api-store.princeton.edu,
no longer resolves (NXDOMAIN, 2026-08-19), and no successor portal is published, so the gateway currently has no discoverable
documentation of any kind. This is the course-catalog and registrar surface the university pipeline hunts for — it exists,
and it is closed.'
baseURL: https://api.princeton.edu
tags:
- Identity
- Directory
- Courses
- Gated
- Authentication
- Gateway
tags_raw:
- Identity
- Directory
- Courses
- Gated
- OAuth2
- Gateway
properties:
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/princeton-authentication.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
url: errors/princeton-errors.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/princeton-lifecycle.yml
- aid: princeton:catalog
name: Princeton University Library Catalog (Orangelight)
x-operator: institution
description: Princeton's library catalog at catalog.princeton.edu, a Blacklight application the Library writes and maintains
itself as pulibrary/orangelight. Every route answers to a .json suffix, so catalog.princeton.edu/catalog.json is an unauthenticated
search API returning a JSON:API-shaped envelope with self/next/last/prev links, facets and full record documents. Records
carry Alma MMS IDs; the underlying library system is an Ex Libris tenancy, but this contract and this application are
Princeton's own code.
humanURL: https://catalog.princeton.edu/
baseURL: https://catalog.princeton.edu
tags:
- Library
- Catalog
- Discovery
- Blacklight
- JSON
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/orangelight
- type: GitHubRepository
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/orangelight
- type: Website
url: https://catalog.princeton.edu/
- aid: princeton:bibdata
name: PUL Bibliographic Data Web Service (Bibdata)
x-operator: institution
description: Princeton University Library's own bibliographic data service at bibdata.princeton.edu. A Rails application
(pulibrary/bibdata) that reads from Alma and re-serves bibliographic records, holdings, delivery and holding locations,
libraries and events as JSON, plus periodic full dumps used to rebuild the Solr indexes behind the catalog. Location endpoints
such as /locations/libraries.json are anonymously readable; staff operations sit behind Princeton CAS. The service prints
its own deployed commit, deploy date and live index timestamps on its home page — more operational transparency than most
of this cohort offers.
humanURL: https://bibdata.princeton.edu/
baseURL: https://bibdata.princeton.edu
tags:
- Library
- Metadata
- JSON
- Open Data
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/bibdata
- type: GitHubRepository
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/bibdata
- type: Website
url: https://bibdata.princeton.edu/
- aid: princeton:figgy-oai
name: Figgy Digital Repository — OAI-PMH and IIIF
x-operator: institution
description: Figgy is Princeton University Library's Valkyrie-based digital repository backend (pulibrary/figgy). It serves
IIIF manifests for digitised material and exposes an OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata-harvesting endpoint at /oai whose Identify response
names "Princeton University Library", with an earliest datestamp of 2017-10-06 and transient deleted-record support. This
is Princeton's verified oai-pmh conformance under the education regime, and unlike most of the cohort the endpoint is
on the institution's own host running the institution's own code.
humanURL: https://figgy.princeton.edu/
baseURL: https://figgy.princeton.edu/oai
tags:
- Repository
- OAI-PMH
- IIIF
- Digital Collections
- Library
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/figgy
- type: GitHubRepository
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/figgy
- type: Examples
url: examples/princeton-figgy-oai-identify.xml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/princeton-conformance.yml
- aid: princeton:data-commons
name: Princeton Data Commons — Discovery
x-operator: institution
description: Princeton's research data repository, split into pdc_describe for deposit and description and pdc_discovery
for the public portal at datacommons.princeton.edu/discovery. Both are Princeton-written (pulibrary/pdc_discovery, pulibrary/pdc_describe),
and the discovery portal exposes an unauthenticated Blacklight JSON API. Datasets are addressed by DataCite DOIs under
Princeton's own 10.34770 prefix and records carry ORCID identifiers. This is the slot most universities in this cohort
fill with a Figshare or Dataverse tenancy; Princeton operates it themselves.
humanURL: https://datacommons.princeton.edu/discovery
baseURL: https://datacommons.princeton.edu/discovery
tags:
- Research Data
- Repository
- DataCite
- ORCID
- Open Data
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/pdc_discovery
- type: GitHubRepository
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/pdc_discovery
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/princeton-conformance.yml
- type: Website
url: https://datacommons.princeton.edu/discovery
- aid: princeton:dataspace-oai
name: DataSpace Institutional Repository — OAI-PMH
x-operator: institution
description: DataSpace is Princeton's older DSpace-based institutional repository for theses, dissertations and archived
research output, with an OAI-PMH metadata-harvesting endpoint and content migrating to Princeton Data Commons. Registered
with DataCite as client pu.dataspace, which has minted 399 DOIs under the 10.34770 prefix. The host CNAMEs to dataspace.pulcloud.io
— pulcloud.io is Princeton University Library's own Google Cloud estate, documented throughout pulibrary/princeton_ansible
— so this is Princeton infrastructure running open-source software, not a hosted vendor tenancy. Every request currently
returns 401 from Princeton's in-house ALTCHA proof-of-work bot challenge (pulibrary/altcha_rust_server); that is a client-verification
gate, not authentication, and the June 2026 profile of this repo recorded it wrongly.
humanURL: https://dataspace.princeton.edu/about
baseURL: https://dataspace.princeton.edu/server/oai/request
tags:
- Repository
- OAI-PMH
- DSpace
- Research Data
- Theses
properties:
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/princeton-conformance.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/princeton-lifecycle.yml
- aid: princeton:finding-aids
name: Princeton University Library Finding Aids (PULFAlight)
x-operator: institution
description: Archival finding aids for Princeton's special collections and the Mudd Manuscript Library, served by an ArcLight
application the Library maintains as pulibrary/pulfalight. The Blacklight .json surface returns collection and component
records with facets and paging links, anonymously.
humanURL: https://findingaids.princeton.edu/
baseURL: https://findingaids.princeton.edu
tags:
- Library
- Archives
- Finding Aids
- Discovery
- JSON
properties:
- type: GitHubRepository
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/pulfalight
- type: Website
url: https://findingaids.princeton.edu/
- aid: princeton:maps
name: Princeton University Library Maps and Geospatial Data (PUL Map)
x-operator: institution
description: GeoBlacklight application at maps.princeton.edu (pulibrary/pulmap) serving Princeton's geospatial data catalog.
The .json surface is anonymously readable and the records follow the OpenGeoMetadata conventions GeoBlacklight is built
around.
humanURL: https://maps.princeton.edu/
baseURL: https://maps.princeton.edu
tags:
- Library
- Geospatial
- Open Data
- Discovery
- JSON
properties:
- type: GitHubRepository
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/pulmap
- type: Website
url: https://maps.princeton.edu/
- aid: princeton:digital-pul
name: Digital PUL (DPUL)
x-operator: institution
description: Princeton's public digital collections site at dpul.princeton.edu (pulibrary/dpul), the presentation layer
over Figgy. Blacklight .json endpoints return collection and item records anonymously; the same content is also reachable
through Allsearch's /search/dpul operation.
humanURL: https://dpul.princeton.edu/
baseURL: https://dpul.princeton.edu
tags:
- Digital Collections
- Library
- Discovery
- JSON
properties:
- type: GitHubRepository
url: https://github.com/pulibrary/dpul
- type: Website
url: https://dpul.princeton.edu/
- aid: princeton:shibboleth-idp
name: Princeton Shibboleth Identity Provider — SAML 2.0 Metadata
x-operator: institution
description: Princeton's campus identity provider publishes signed SAML 2.0 metadata at idp.princeton.edu/idp/shibboleth.
The EntityDescriptor names Princeton University, carries administrative, support and technical contacts at princeton.edu,
declares protocolSupportEnumeration for Shibboleth 1.0, SAML 1.1 and SAML 2.0, and publishes signing and encryption key
descriptors plus shibmd:Scope elements. This is a machine-readable contract that is institution-operated by definition,
it is the university pipeline's IdentityFederation class, and it is Princeton's verified shibboleth and saml conformance
under the education regime. It is also almost never catalogued anywhere.
humanURL: https://idp.princeton.edu/idp/shibboleth
baseURL: https://idp.princeton.edu/idp
tags:
- Identity Federation
- Shibboleth
- SAML
- InCommon
- Authentication
properties:
- type: Examples
url: examples/princeton-shibboleth-idp-metadata.xml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/princeton-conformance.yml
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/princeton-authentication.yml
- aid: princeton:exlibris-tenancy
name: Ex Libris Alma / Primo VE — Princeton tenancy (01PRI_INST)
x-operator: tenant
description: 'Princeton''s library management and discovery layer runs on Ex Libris, with institution code 01PRI_INST: Alma
at na05.alma.exlibrisgroup.com and a Primo VE instance at princeton.primo.exlibrisgroup.com. Both returned 200. The data
is Princeton''s — its holdings, its patrons, its link resolver targets, which surface in Allsearch results as resource_url
values — but the API contract belongs to Ex Libris and is scored against Ex Libris, not Princeton. Recorded as a relationship
because it is a real institutional fact and because Princeton''s own bibdata service is built on top of it. No vendor
spec is saved under this slug.'
humanURL: https://princeton.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/
tags:
- Library
- Vendor Tenancy
- Discovery
- Ex Libris
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://princeton.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/
- aid: princeton:canvas-tenancy
name: Canvas LMS — Princeton tenancy
x-operator: tenant
description: Princeton's learning management system is Instructure Canvas at princeton.instructure.com. The host is live
behind a Cloudflare interstitial (403 to non-browser clients). Any Canvas REST API, LTI conformance or Caliper eventing
available there is Instructure's contract running under Princeton's name, not Princeton engineering, so nothing is saved
under this slug. Recorded because the LMS tenancy is the single most consequential programmable relationship a university
has and leaving it out would misrepresent the footprint.
humanURL: https://princeton.instructure.com/
tags:
- LMS
- Vendor Tenancy
- Teaching
- Canvas
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://princeton.instructure.com/
common:
- type: Website
url: https://www.princeton.edu/
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/pulibrary
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/PrincetonUniversity
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/Princeton-University-Art-Museum
- type: LinkedIn
url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/princeton-university/
- type: PrivacyPolicy
url: https://www.princeton.edu/privacy-notice
- type: APIReference
url: https://allsearch-api.princeton.edu/api-docs
- type: LibraryCatalog
url: https://catalog.princeton.edu/
- type: ResearchRepository
url: https://datacommons.princeton.edu/discovery
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://idp.princeton.edu/idp/shibboleth
- type: OpenData
url: https://maps.princeton.edu/
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/princeton-conformance.yml
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/princeton-authentication.yml
- type: ErrorCatalog
url: errors/princeton-errors.yml
- type: Vocabulary
url: vocabulary/princeton-vocabulary.yml
- type: SpectralRules
url: rules/princeton-openapi-spectral-rules.yml
- type: Scopes
url: scopes/princeton-scopes.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/princeton-lifecycle.yml
- type: JSONLD
url: json-ld/princeton-context.jsonld
- type: DomainSecurity
url: security/princeton-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
url: plans/princeton-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
url: rate-limits/princeton-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
url: finops/princeton-finops.yml
- type: Review
url: review.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
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