Search

It is possible to search for packages available on a package source using the V3 API. The resource used for searching is the SearchQueryService resource found in the service index.

Versioning

The following @type values are used:

SearchQueryService/3.5.0

This version introduces support for the packageType query parameter and the packageTypes response property, allowing filtering by author defined package types. It is fully backwards compatible with queries to SearchQueryService.

Base URL

The base URL for the following API is the value of the @id property associated with one of the aforementioned resource @type values. In the following document, the placeholder base URL {@id} will be used. The base URL may change based on implementation or infrastructure changes within the package source so it must be dynamically fetched from the service index by the client software.

HTTP methods

All URLs found in the registration resource support the HTTP methods GET and HEAD.

Search for packages

The search API allows a client to query for a page of packages matching a specified search query. The interpretation of the search query (e.g. the tokenization of the search terms) is determined by the server implementation but the general expectation is that the search query is used for matching package IDs, titles, descriptions, and tags. Other package metadata fields may also be considered.

An unlisted package should never appear in search results.

GET {@id}?q={QUERY}&skip={SKIP}&take={TAKE}&prerelease={PRERELEASE}&semVerLevel={SEMVERLEVEL}&packageType={PACKAGETYPE}

Request parameters

The search query q is parsed in a manner that is defined by the server implementation. nuget.org supports basic filtering on a variety of fields. If no q is provided, all packages should be returned, within the boundaries imposed by skip and take. This enables the "Browse" tab in the NuGet Visual Studio experience.

The skip parameter defaults to 0.

The take parameter should be an integer greater than zero. The server implementation may impose a maximum value.

If prerelease is not provided, pre-release packages are excluded.

The semVerLevel query parameter is used to opt-in to SemVer 2.0.0 packages. If this query parameter is excluded, only packages with SemVer 1.0.0 compatible versions will be returned (with the standard NuGet versioning caveats, such as version strings with 4 integer pieces). If semVerLevel=2.0.0 is provided, both SemVer 1.0.0 and SemVer 2.0.0 compatible packages will be returned. See the SemVer 2.0.0 support for nuget.org for more information.

The packageType parameter is used to further filter the search results to only packages that have at least one package type matching the package type name. If the provided package type is not a valid package type as defined by the Package Type document, an empty result will returned. If the provided package type is empty, no filter will be applied. In other words, passing no value to the packageType parameter will behave as if the parameter was not passed.

Response

The response is JSON document containing up to take search results. Search results are grouped by package ID.

The root JSON object has the following properties:

Search result

Each item in the data array is a JSON object comprised of a group of package versions sharing the same package ID. The object has the following properties:

On nuget.org, a verified package is one which has a package ID matching a reserved ID prefix and owned by one of the reserved prefix's owners. For more information, see the documentation about ID prefix reservation.

The metadata contained in the search result object is taken from the latest package version. Each item in the versions array is a JSON object with the following properties:

The packageTypes array will always consist of at least one (1) item. Package type for a given package ID is considered to be the package types defined by the latest version of the package with respect to the other search parameters. Each item in the packageTypes array is a JSON object with the following properties:

Sample request

GET https://search-sample.nuget.org/query?q=NuGet.Versioning&prerelease=false&semVerLevel=2.0.0

Make sure to fetch the base URL (https://search-sample.nuget.org/query in this sample) from the service index as mentioned in the base URL section.

Sample response

{
  "totalHits": 2,
  "data": [
    {
      "registration": "https://api.nuget.org/v3/registration-sample/nuget.versioning/index.json",
      "id": "NuGet.Versioning",
      "version": "4.4.0",
      "description": "NuGet's implementation of Semantic Versioning.",
      "summary": "",
      "title": "NuGet.Versioning",
      "licenseUrl": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NuGet/NuGet.Client/dev/LICENSE.txt",
      "tags": [ "semver", "semantic", "versioning" ],
      "authors": [ "NuGet" ],
      "totalDownloads": 141896,
      "verified": true,
      "packageTypes": [
        {
          "name": "Dependency"
        }
      ],
      "versions": [
        {
          "version": "3.3.0",
          "downloads": 50343,
          "@id": "https://api.nuget.org/v3/registration-sample/nuget.versioning/3.3.0.json"
        },
        {
          "version": "3.4.3",
          "downloads": 27932,
          "@id": "https://api.nuget.org/v3/registration-sample/nuget.versioning/3.4.3.json"
        },
        {
          "version": "4.0.0",
          "downloads": 63004,
          "@id": "https://api.nuget.org/v3/registration-sample/nuget.versioning/4.0.0.json"
        },
        {
          "version": "4.4.0",
          "downloads": 617,
          "@id": "https://api.nuget.org/v3/registration-sample/nuget.versioning/4.4.0.json"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "@id": "https://api.nuget.org/v3/registration-sample/nerdbank.gitversioning/index.json",
      "@type": "Package",
      "registration": "https://api.nuget.org/v3/registration-sample/nerdbank.gitversioning/index.json",
      "id": "Nerdbank.GitVersioning",
      "version": "2.0.41",
      "description": "Stamps your assemblies with semver 2.0 compliant git commit specific version information and provides NuGet versioning information as well.",
      "summary": "Stamps your assemblies with semver 2.0 compliant git commit specific version information and provides NuGet versioning information as well.",
      "title": "Nerdbank.GitVersioning",
      "licenseUrl": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AArnott/Nerdbank.GitVersioning/ed547462f7/LICENSE.txt",
      "projectUrl": "http://github.com/aarnott/Nerdbank.GitVersioning",
      "tags": [ "git", "commit", "versioning", "version", "assemblyinfo" ],
      "authors": [ "Andrew Arnott" ],
      "totalDownloads": 11906,
      "verified": false,
      "versions": [
        {
          "version": "1.6.35",
          "downloads": 10229,
          "@id": "https://api.nuget.org/v3/registration-sample/nerdbank.gitversioning/1.6.35.json"
        },
        {
          "version": "2.0.41",
          "downloads": 1677,
          "@id": "https://api.nuget.org/v3/registration-sample/nerdbank.gitversioning/2.0.41.json"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}