courses.umn.edu

courses.umn.edu

A JSON/XML service for getting University of Minnesota course and class data by campus and term. Works for all campuses. Searchable. Up to date.

Getting Courses

You probably want to retrieve courses using cURL/Wget/etc. The files can be quite large and browsers can get fussy about loading a 50 meg xml file.

You must include a Campus and Term. The format is:

https://courses.umn.edu/campuses/[campus abbreviation]/terms/[strm]/courses.json

or, if you want XML:

https://courses.umn.edu/campuses/[campus abbreviation]/terms/[strm]/courses.xml

Some examples:

What Campuses Are Available

What Terms Are Available

Courses vs Classes

This service can provide you data for Courses or Classes. Courses define what will be taught, while Classes are things you can actually enroll for.

If you’re not sure which you want, you probably want to look at Classes.

To view Classes data, use

https://courses.umn.edu/campuses/[campus abbreviation]/terms/[strm]/classes.json https://courses.umn.edu/campuses/[campus abbreviation]/terms/[strm]/classes.xml

To view Course data, use

https://courses.umn.edu/campuses/[campus abbreviation]/terms/[strm]/courses.json https://courses.umn.edu/campuses/[campus abbreviation]/terms/[strm]/courses.xml

In the documentation we use the term ‘course’, but everything applies equally to Courses and Classes.

Documentation

We have documentation about the data you’ll find in doc/resources.

For Courses, you’ll probably want to start with courses.yml.

For Classes, you’ll probably want to start with courses.yml.

Searching

Search for courses by using the query string. You can search by:

Searching works with both JSON and XML output.

All of these searches can be combined, as we’ll see in the examples.

Subject

Finding courses under one subject:

courses.json?q=subject_id=HIST

This will return all courses with the subject of HIST.

Finding courses under many subjects:

courses.xml?q=subject_id=HIST|PHYS

Returns all courses with a subject of HIST or PHYS. You can have as many subjects as you want, just separate them with a |.

Catalog Number

Find a course with a specific catalog number

courses.json?q=catalog_number=1101W

Returns all courses with a catalog number of ‘1101W’.

Find a course with a catalog number higher than a value:

courses.xml?q=catalog_number>1000

Returns all courses with a catalog number higher than 1000.

You can also do >= to return courses with a catalog number higher than or equal to 1000

Find a course with a catalog number less than a value:

courses.xml?q=catalog_number<5000

Returns all courses with a catalog number less than 1000.

You can also do <= to return courses with a catalog number less than or equal to 1000

Find courses with a catalog number in a range of values:

courses.xml?q=catalog_number>=1000,catalog_number<5000

Returns all courses with a catalog_number greater than or equal to 1000 and less than 5000

Liberal Education / General Education

Different campuses have different ways of identifying courses that meet General Education or Liberal Education criteria. You can search for these by using the course_attribute_family:

And if you’re looking for a courses with a specific attribute, you can search with course_attribute_id

Get courses that satisfy UMNTC’s Writing Intensive

courses.json?q=course_attribute_id=WI

Get courses that satisfy UMNRO’s Mathematical Thinking

courses.json?q=course_attribute_id=MATH%20THINK

Get courses that meet either UMNDL’s Fine Arts or Humanities

courses.xml?q=course_attribute_id=FINE%20ARTS|HUMANITIES

Get courses that have any attribute

courses.xml?q=course_attribute_id=all

Or that have no attribute

courses.xml?q=course_attribute_id=none

Instruction Mode

You can search using any of these Instruction Mode abbreviations:

Get courses that are Partially Online

courses.json?q=instruction_mode_id=PA

Get courses that are Partially Online or Primarily Online

courses.xml?q=instruction_mode_id=PA|PR

Location

Search for courses with at least one section in the location you specifiy

courses.xml?q=locations=TCWESTBANK

or

courses.json?q=locations=OFFCMPROCH

Combining Searches

Any of the searches can be combined. For example

courses.json?q=course_attribute_id=WI,instruction_mode_id=P,catalog_number>=2000,catalog_number<3000,subject_id=HIST

Will return any courses that are: