Language Detection: Web API
AlchemyAPI provides easy-to-use facilities for classifying your web-based content by language. These URL processing calls automatically fetch the desired Internet webpage, normalize / clean it (removing ads, navigation links, and other unimportant content), and identify the primary language of the contained text.
These API calls may be utilized to process hosted webpages, blogs, and other publicly-accessible Internet content. If you are processing content that is not hosted on a public webserver, use our HTML API calls instead.
API Call: URLGetLanguage
Description: The URLGetLanguage call is utilized to detect the language utilized within a given web page. AlchemyAPI will download the requested URL, extracting text from the HTML document structure (ignoring navigation links, advertisements, and other undesireable content), and perform language detection operations.
Endpoint: http://access.alchemyapi.com/calls/url/URLGetLanguage
Parameters:
| http argument | parameter description | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| url | http url (must be uri-argument encoded)
(required parameter) |
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| apikey | your private api key
(required parameter) |
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| outputMode | desired API output format Possible values: xml (default) json rdf (optional parameter) |
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| jsonp | desired JSONP callback (optional parameter, requires "outputMode" to be set to json) |
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| sourceText | where to obtain the text that will be processed by this API call. AlchemyAPI supports multiple modes of text extraction: web page cleaning (removes ads, navigation links, etc.), raw text extraction (processes all web page text, including ads / nav links), visual constraint queries, and XPath queries. Possible values:
(optional parameter) |
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| cquery | a visual constraints query to apply to the web page. Constraint queries enable API operations to be performed on a targeted area of a web page, such as a story title or product description. (optional parameter, used when sourceText is set to 'cquery'. must be uri-argument encoded) |
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| xpath | an XPath query to apply to the web page. XPath queries enable API operations to be performed on a targeted area of a web page, such as a story title or product description. (optional parameter, used when sourceText is set to 'xpath'. must be uri-argument encoded) |
Response Format (XML):
<results>
<status>REQUEST_STATUS</status>
<url>REQUESTED_URL</url>
<language>DETECTED_LANGUAGE</language>
<iso-639-1>ISO_639_1_CODE</iso-639-1>
<iso-639-2>ISO_639_2_CODE</iso-639-2>
<iso-639-3>ISO_639_3_CODE</iso-639-3>
<ethnologue>ETHNOLOGUE_URL</ethnologue>
<native-speakers>NUM_NATIVE_SPEAKERS</native-speakers>
<wikipedia>WIKIPEDIA_URL</wikipedia>
</results>
Response Format (JSON):
{
"status": "REQUEST_STATUS",
"url": "REQUESTED_URL",
"language": "DETECTED_LANGUAGE",
"iso-639-1": "ISO_639_1_CODE",
"iso-639-2": "ISO_639_2_CODE",
"iso-639-3": "ISO_639_3_CODE",
"ethnologue": "ETHNOLOGUE_URL",
"native-speakers": "NUM_NATIVE_SPEAKERS",
"wikipedia": "WIKIPEDIA_URL"
}
Response Format (RDF):
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:aapi="http://rdf.alchemyapi.com/rdf/v1/s/aapi-schema#"
xml:base="http://rdf.alchemyapi.com/rdf/v1/r/response.rdf">
<rdf:Description rdf:ID="DOCUMENT_HASH">
<rdf:type rdf:resource="http://rdf.alchemyapi.com/rdf/v1/s/aapi-schema#DocInfo"/>
<aapi:ResultStatus>REQUEST_STATUS</aapi:ResultStatus>
<aapi:URL>DOCUMENT_URL</aapi:URL>
<aapi:Language>DOCUMENT_LANGUAGE</aapi:Language>
<aapi:ISO-639-1>ISO_639_1_CODE</aapi:ISO-639-1>
<aapi:ISO-639-2>ISO_639_2_CODE</aapi:ISO-639-2>
<aapi:ISO-639-3>ISO_639_3_CODE</aapi:ISO-639-3>
<aapi:Ethnologue>ETHNOLOGUE_URL</aapi:Ethnologue>
<aapi:NativeSpeakers>NUM_NATIVE_SPEAKERS</aapi:NativeSpeakers>
<aapi:Wikipedia>WIKIPEDIA_URL</aapi:Wikipedia>
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>
Response Fields:
| field name | field description |
|---|---|
| status | success / failure status indicating whether the request was processed. Possible values: OK ERROR |
| url | http url information was requested for. |
| language | detected language for the specified http url. For a list of all languages (90+) that are detected, click here. |
| iso-639-1 | ISO-639-1 code for the detected language. For more information on ISO-639-1, click here. |
| iso-639-2 | ISO-639-2 code for the detected language. For more information on ISO-639-2, click here. |
| iso-639-3 | ISO-639-3 code for the detected language. For more information on ISO-639-3, click here. |
| ethnologue | Link to Ethnologue containing information on the detected language. For more information on Ethnologue, click here. |
| native-speakers | Number of persons who natively speak the detected language. Language statistics courtesy of Wikipedia. |
| wikipedia | Link to the Wikipedia page for the detected language. |
| statusInfo | failure status information (sent only if "status" == "ERROR"). Possible values: invalid-api-key cannot-retrieve page-is-not-html content-exceeds-size-limit |
Example Call:
XML: http://access.alchemyapi.com/calls/...
RDF: http://access.alchemyapi.com/calls/...
API Notes:
- 1. Calls to URLGetLanguage can be made using HTTP GET or POST.
- 2. HTTP POST calls should include the Content-Type header: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
- 3. URL retrieval is attempted for a maximum of 10 seconds. Requests taking longer than this will result in a "cannot-retrieve" error response.
- 4. Requested HTML documents can be a maximum of 600 kilobytes. Larger documents will result in a "content-exceeds-size-limit" error response.
- 3. A minimum of 15 characters of text must exist within the requested HTTP document to perform language detection.
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