---
name: federal-register-api-ingestion
description: "How to get Office of the Federal Register API data into a pandas DataFrame and Parquet: access, the request, the format, limits, quirks and terms."
---

# Load recent Federal Register documents into Parquet

Source entry: https://signal-lab-jet.vercel.app/datasets/federal-register-api
Provider: https://www.federalregister.gov/developers/documentation/api/v1
Checked against the provider's documentation: 2026-11-02

## Access
- No account or key. The public document-search endpoint returns JSON or CSV.
- Use date and agency filters to divide long searches; each response page is capped at 1,000 documents.

## Request
```bash
curl 'https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents.json?per_page=25&order=newest&conditions%5Bpublication_date%5D%5Bgte%5D=2026-10-19'
```

## Format
JSON with a result count, pagination metadata and document records containing identifiers, titles, types, agencies, abstracts, publication dates and provider links.

## Load into pandas and Parquet
Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.
```python
"""Recent Federal Register documents -> pandas -> Parquet. No key."""
import requests
import pandas as pd

URL = "https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documents.json"
params = {
    "per_page": 25,
    "order": "newest",
    "conditions[publication_date][gte]": "2026-10-19",
}
response = requests.get(URL, params=params, timeout=60)
response.raise_for_status()
payload = response.json()
df = pd.DataFrame(payload["results"])
df["publication_date"] = pd.to_datetime(df["publication_date"])
df.to_parquet("federal_register_recent.parquet", index=False)
print(len(df), "documents", df["publication_date"].min().date().isoformat(), "to",
      df["publication_date"].max().date().isoformat(), "of", payload["count"], "matches")
```
Run by us on 2026-11-02 (python 3.13.5 | pandas 3.1.0 | pyarrow 26.0.0 | requests 2.34.2). Result: 25 documents 2026-11-02 to 2026-11-02 of 1076 matches

## Limits
- Rate limit: Not stated.
- Document search pages are limited to 1,000 records.
- The document-search endpoint covers publications since 1994.

## Quirks
- Publication date, signing date, effective date and comment-close date describe different stages; preserve each populated field.
- The API site is an unofficial edition. Keep official PDF and XML links with the metadata when the underlying text matters.
- Corrections and related documents can appear after first publication, so retain document numbers and retrieval time for refreshes.

## Terms and attribution
- The API pages do not state a dataset-wide SPDX licence.
- Federal websites can contain protected third-party material, trademarks and logos even when the underlying federal work is not copyright-protected.
- Terms page: https://www.usa.gov/government-copyright

## Sources
- https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documentation.json: "Search all Federal Register documents published since 1994."
- https://www.federalregister.gov/api/v1/documentation.json: "How many documents to return at once; 1000 maximum."
- https://www.usa.gov/government-copyright: "Not everything that appears on a federal government website is a government work."

## Help improve this skill
Missing a source, or see something to improve? Call the MCP tool suggest_source or feedback (or POST /api/suggest or /api/feedback). Reviewed ideas: https://signal-lab-jet.vercel.app/agent-suggestions

Information for educational purposes only. Free tiers, limits and licenses belong to the providers and may change; check the provider's own terms before using the data.