Is there a way to get definitions for words from specific dictionaries?
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Is there a way to get definitions for words from specific dictionaries?

Hi - I am building an app that requires domain specific definitions. Is there a way to access only definitions from "A Dictionary of Computer Science"?.
Thanks
Best Answers
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AmosDuveen Member, Administrator, Moderator admin
Hi @ilivni870 ,
At the moment, the focus of the API project is to provide an accessible resource of general-purpose dictionaries, such as the Oxford Dictionary of English. This may change as the project develops but we will be guided by demand; I will make a note of it for our development team to consider, however, I suspect they currently have more pressing priorities.
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AmosDuveen Member, Administrator, Moderator admin
Hi @ilivni870,
A second thought regarding your process: have you considered using our filtered word list endpoint? I was thinking something along the lines of collecting a list of words tagged as belonging to a given domain ( e.g. for computing: https://od-api.oxforddictionaries.com:443/api/v1/wordlist/en/domains=Computing) then, as a second stage, using the output list of headwords as a basis for future definition calls.
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AmosDuveen Member, Administrator, Moderator admin
You're welcome.
The second choice was just a really easy way to experiment to see what is available, rather than something which could be incorporated into an app.
Answers
Hey @ilivni870 - let me forward your question to the right person in the technical team, so bear with me!
Thanks for the response. The hackish way I am doing this at the moment is brute force i.e
Nice Product. Fair accessibility limits and pricing for experimenting and scaling. Although it would be great to have some more specific code examples e.g. parse JSON response to pandas (python) or any other tabular form, in one place.
Quick thought - is there a method to get a list of all domains from Oxford? This way I have to experiment less with what definitions are acceptable.
Hi @ilivni870 let me ask my colleagues again - good that you included the code in your comment, that always helps!
Hi @ilivni870,
Yes, there is. We have a selection of 'utility' endpoints which allow developers to collect all this sort of metadata content. To deal with your specific query, you can make a call to "https://od-api.oxforddictionaries.com:443/api/v1/domains/en" (note the language component at the end as each language dataset has different domain labels).
To deal with the broader issue of what else is possible, I recommend browsing the developer portal, which shows you all of the possible endpoints, languages and filters etc., including the utility section at the bottom of the page. Note that, although this site constructs a request URL for you, you will need to change the hostname slightly as it is hosted on a parallel site for security reasons.
Thanks @AmosDuveen. I actually like the first choice better
"https://od-api.oxforddictionaries.com:443/api/v1/domains/en"