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Nigeria

The API splits Nigeria into

  • States (36)
  • Local Government Areas (LGAs) (775)

You can get more information about Nigeria by sending a GET request to api/country?search=nigeria. Assuming you don't know the id.

curl https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries?search=nigeria -H "X-Api-Key:xxxxx"

It should return something like this

{
"message": "Countries fetched successful",
"success": true,
"data": [
{
"id": "f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145",
"name": "Nigeria",
"description": "Largest country in Africa",
"code": "ng",
"createdAt": "2021-03-15T10:26:05.644Z",
"updatedAt": "2021-03-17T07:13:00.244Z",
"link": "..."
}
]
}

Now you know the id, you can try this

curl https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries/f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145 H "X-Api-Key:xxxxx"

The response will look like this

{
"message": "Country fetched successful",
"success": true,
"data": {
"id": "f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145",
"name": "Nigeria",
"description": "Largest country in Africa",
"code": "ng"
}
}
info

It would make a lot of sense to have something like api/countries/nigeria. But I asked a few more experienced backend persons and the reason it's not a good practice is that resource identifiers should be unique. What if the country decides to change their names🤷‍♀️? I'm pretty sure the ids will never change, so the search approach makes more sense.

States#

There are 36 states in Nigeria. You can get all of them by sending a GET request to the /api/countries/countryId/states endpoint. Here's an example

curl https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries/:countryId/states H "X-Api-Key:xxxxx"

This will return something like this

{
"message": "States fetched successfully",
"success": true,
"data": [
{
"id": "cd269093-1687-4b31-8ec1-e978898b81fd",
"name": "Abia",
"code": "abia",
"safeCode": "NG-AB",
"postalCode": 440001,
"description": "Abia is a state in the south eastern part of Nigeria. The capital is Umuahia, and the major commercial city is Aba, which was formerly a British colonial government outpost in the region, and is also one of the most populated areas in Nigeria",
"capital": "Umuahia",
"cities": [
"Aba"
],
"countryId": "f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145",
"url": "https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries/f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145/states/cd269093-1687-4b31-8ec1-e978898b81fd"
},
{
"id": "ac0974a1-3f1b-4e39-8bfa-703c00d8d668",
"name": "Abuja",
"code": "abuja",
"safeCode": "NG-ABJ",
"postalCode": 900211,
"description": "Abuja is the capital and eighth most populous city of Nigeria. Located in the centre of the country within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), it is a planned city built mainly in the 1980s.",
"capital": "Abuja Municipal Area",
"cities": [],
"countryId": "f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145",
"url": "https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries/f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145/states/ac0974a1-3f1b-4e39-8bfa-703c00d8d668"
},
{...}
]
}

Get state by Id#

You can get to a state by appending their Ids

curl https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries/:countryId/states/:stateId H "X-Api-Key:xxxxx"

You'll get the following response

{
"message": "State fetched successfully",
"success": true,
"data": {
"id": "e4c18d52-959b-4287-b4c6-10d4879e300e",
"name": "Kano",
"code": "kano",
"safeCode": "NG-KN",
"postalCode": 700001,
"description": "Kano State is located in northern Nigeria.[6] Kano was created on 27 May, 1967 from the Northern Region, and has borders with Katsina State (northwest) Jigawa State (northeast) Bauchi State (southeast) and Kaduna State (southwest).",
"capital": "Kano",
"cities": [
"Kano"
],
"countryId": "f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145",
}
}

Search, Sort, Filter states#

You can do pretty much anything on the States endpoint - Searching, Sorting, Filtering by following these guides. Here's an example of how you can sort by name and filter the name & description fields.

Your response would look like

{
"message": "States fetched successfully",
"success": true,
"data": [
{
"name": "Abia",
"description": "Abia is a state in the south eastern part of Nigeria. The capital is Umuahia, and the major commercial city is Aba, which was formerly a British colonial government outpost in the region, and is also one of the most populated areas in Nigeria"
},
{
"name": "Abuja",
"description": "Abuja is the capital and eighth most populous city of Nigeria. Located in the centre of the country within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), it is a planned city built mainly in the 1980s.",
},
{...}
]
}

LGAs#

States are futher split into local government areas (LGAs) and they can be accessed relative to the states. Here is an example that gets all the LGAs in Lagos state.

curl https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries/f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145/states/c9aa6667-0c77-4674-b8fc-2e773c114bda/lgas -H "X-Api-Key:your-api-key"

You'll get the following response.

{
"message": "LGAs fetched",
"success": true,
"data": [
{
"id": "aedbc5ed-8ba6-41ca-bbf4-5491307c4615",
"name": "Agege",
"code": "agege",
"postalCode": 100215,
"description": "Agege is a suburb and local government area in the Ikeja Division of Lagos State, Nigeria.",
"countryId": "f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145",
"stateId": "c9aa6667-0c77-4674-b8fc-2e773c114bda",
"url": "https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries/f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145/states/c9aa6667-0c77-4674-b8fc-2e773c114bda/lgas/aedbc5ed-8ba6-41ca-bbf4-5491307c4615"
},
{
"id": "99d0e288-d565-4532-b99e-44a67a61d450",
"name": "Ajeromi-Ifelodun",
"code": "ajeromi-Ifelodun",
"postalCode": 102103,
"description": "Ajeromi-Ifelodun is a Local Government Area in Badagry Division, Lagos State. It has some 57,276.3 inhabitants per square kilometer, among if not the world's densest.",
"countryId": "f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145",
"stateId": "c9aa6667-0c77-4674-b8fc-2e773c114bda",
"url": "https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries/f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145/states/c9aa6667-0c77-4674-b8fc-2e773c114bda/lgas/99d0e288-d565-4532-b99e-44a67a61d450"
},
{
"id": "23093f9d-957d-4a88-b985-0bc87cc10404",
"name": "Alimosho",
"code": "alimosho",
"postalCode": 100275,
"description": "Alimosho is a Local Government Area in the Ikeja Division, Lagos State, Nigeria. It is the largest local government in Lagos, with 1,288,714 inhabitants, according to the official 2006 Census.",
"countryId": "f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145",
"stateId": "c9aa6667-0c77-4674-b8fc-2e773c114bda",
"url": "https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries/f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145/states/c9aa6667-0c77-4674-b8fc-2e773c114bda/lgas/23093f9d-957d-4a88-b985-0bc87cc10404"
},
{...}
]
}

Other Operations on LGAs#

LGA, like any other entity on WhereAPI, enables searching, pagination, sorting and ordering.

Pagination & Filtering#

We can combine the skip and take query params to request data progressively. Here's an example where we get the id and name of 4 LGAs in Abuja, but skip the first 2.

curl https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries/f794ecd7-679e-4989-9be6-e081ac2f7145/states/ac0974a1-3f1b-4e39-8bfa-703c00d8d668/lgas - H "X-Api-Key:your-api-key"

The first guid in this url is the id of Nigeria, while the second is the id of Abuja. They can pretty much be any Id of any other state.

curl https://whereapis-africa.herokuapp.com/api/countries/{{:countryId}}/states/{{:stateId}}/lgas?skip=2&take=4&fields=id,name - H "X-Api-Key:your-api-key"

Response

{
"message": "LGAs fetched",
"success": true,
"data": [
{
"id": "5bd542c7-290e-4da0-9523-650d168dc94a",
"name": "Bagwai"
},
{
"id": "dbba625b-1575-4926-b97c-1e9e2663549f",
"name": "Bebeji"
},
{
"id": "8873c5d9-ddfa-4cad-8c83-e4313582cf2c",
"name": "Bichi"
},
{
"id": "6098cc7d-f13b-476b-9408-5244822ab5f2",
"name": "Bunkure"
},
{
"id": "b93d7627-e9bb-40df-ae47-2d3e4156d23c",
"name": "Dala"
}
]
}
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