For developers

All character data on this site is available as JSON. It is free, read-only and keyless. Search by name or by codepoint to return character, Unicode name and codepoint, category, a link to its page here, and a short usage note.

The endpoint

GET https://api.textcharacter.com/api/v1/query

The version root, GET /api/v1, answers with a short usage note and the current rate limit, so a cold request is never a 404.

Parameters

Parameter	What it does
`q` required	The search term — a name, part of a name, or a codepoint. Between 2 and 100 characters. Missing, empty or too short and the response is a 400 carrying an `error` and a `usage` line.
`limit` optional	How many results to return. Defaults to 25, capped at 100. Asking for more is capped rather than refused; the `limit` field in the response tells you what was applied.

Rate limit, CORS, errors

60 requests per 60 seconds, per IP. Over that the response is a 429 with a Retry-After header and a matching retryAfter field in the body.
CORS is open — every /api/v1 response carries Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *, so browser code can call it directly. GET only.
Errors are JSON: a string plus the usage line, under the matching status code.

Example

curl "https://api.textcharacter.com/api/v1/query?q=em+dash&limit=3"

The response:

{
  "query": "em dash",
  "count": 3,
  "total": 5,
  "limit": 3,
  "results": [
    {
      "char": "—",
      "name": "Em Dash",
      "codepoint": "U+2014",
      "url": "https://www.textcharacter.com/em-dash-2014",
      "category": "punctuation-dashes",
      "usage": "The widest ordinary dash, and the one English writers get attached to — it opens a sentence up for an aside, marks an abrupt turn, or lands a final clause harder than a comma would. Unicode's code…"
    },
    {
      "char": "︱",
      "name": "Presentation Form For Vertical Em Dash Glyph For Vertical Em Dash",
      "codepoint": "U+FE31",
      "url": "https://www.textcharacter.com/presentation-form-for-vertical-em-dash-glyph-for-vertical-em-dash-fe31",
      "category": "pd",
      "usage": null
    },
    {
      "char": "﹘",
      "name": "Small Em Dash",
      "codepoint": "U+FE58",
      "url": "https://www.textcharacter.com/small-em-dash-fe58",
      "category": "pd",
      "usage": null
    }
  ]
}

Fields

query: The search term as the API read it, trimmed.
count: How many results this response carries.
total: How many characters matched in total, ignoring the limit.
limit: The page size actually applied.
results[].char: The character itself.
results[].name: Its Unicode name.
results[].codepoint: The U+XXXX form; space-separated for multi-codepoint sequences.
results[].url: The character’s page on this site.
results[].category: Its primary category slug — a curated one where it has one, otherwise the raw Unicode bucket. null if it has none.
results[].usage: A ~200-character excerpt of what we have written about the character, or null when nothing has been written yet.