Search Tags

This endpoint is useful for searching popular OpenStreetMap tags. We indexed OpenStreetMap wiki pages for each tag’s description field and put them in a vector database.

This makes it easy to search for particular features in English and get the tag OSM uses for that feature. For example, searching “trail head” gives highway=trailhead as the first result, which is described as:

A trailhead (highway=trailhead) is a designated or customary place where a trip on a trail begins or ends.

Multiple results are returned, ordered in increasing dist. This allows for autocomplete text boxes, where a user can type in their query and then select the exact tag they want to use.

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Request Parameters

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Response

A successful search query will give a 200 OK response with Content-Type: application/json. Results look like this (query was “national park”):

{
  "tags": [{
    "dist": "0.109221339226",
    "tag_details": {
      "description": "National Park",
      "tag": "protect_class=2"
    }
  }, {
    "dist": "0.116037666798",
    "tag_details": {
      "description": "The boundary of a national park, an area of natural beauty, set aside for conservation and for recreation",
      "tag": "boundary=national_park"
    }
  }]
}

In the event of an error, an error response will be issued, usually with a 5xx error code. The error will be JSON-formatted, with an error field describing the cause.

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Data License

This API serves OpenStreetMap data, which is freely available and is licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).