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Using Autocomplete API

Instructions on how to use Crunchbase's Autocomplete endpoint

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The Autocomplete API included in API v4.0 is intended to help you quickly find the entity you are looking for by suggesting a list of entities based on your query string & the defined collection(s) you are interested in.

To make a request using our Autocomplete APIs, you must provide the following:

  • a user key
  • a query string (e.g. Box)

You can also further customize the API response by...

  • including "collection_ids" in the parameter of the request to tell the Autocomplete API to only suggest entities within the collection(s) specified
  • including "limit" in the parameter of the request to limit how many results are returned per page (note: max of 25)

📘

Pro Tips: Use Autocomplete API to help with Entity Lookup & Search APIs

A popular use case for the Autocomplete API is to find the UUID or permalink that you need as inputs to the search API or the entity lookup API

  • Find the UUID/permalink of the category and location that you want to use as the search criteria for your Search API
  • Find the UUID/permalink of the company that you want to enrich using the Entity Lookup API

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Pro Tips: Get more specific with collection_ids

You can query against multiple collections

  • ex: "collection_ids=categories,category_groups"

You can narrow down even further by adding a specific facet of the collection

  • locations --> location.cities, location.regions, location.countries, location.groups (e.g. SF Bay Area)
  • organizations --> organization.companies, organization.investors, organization.schools
  • people --> person.investors
  • principals --> principal.investors
--Finding investors that match "Mayfield"--
GET https://api.crunchbase.com/api/v4/autocompletes?user_key=[INSERT_Key]&query=mayfield&collection_ids=principal.investors&limit=10

--finding categories that match "bio"
GET https://api.crunchbase.com/api/v4/autocompletes?user_key=[INSERT_Key]&query=bio&collection_ids=categories&limit=10

--finding categories and category groups that match "mobile payment"
GET https://api.crunchbase.com/api/v4/autocompletes?user_key=[INSERT_Key]&collection_ids=categories,category_groups&query=mobile%20payment

--finding companies (e.g. organizations that have "company" facet) that match "airbnb"
GET https://api.crunchbase.com/api/v4/autocompletes?user_key=[INSERT_Key]&query=airbnb&collection_ids=organization.companies

--finding countries and cities (e.g. locations that have either "country" or "city" facet) that match "united"
GET https://api.crunchbase.com/api/v4/autocompletes?user_key=[INSERT_Key]&query=united&limit=10&collection_ids=location.countries,location.cities

--Finding investors that match "Mayfield"--
curl --request GET 'https://api.crunchbase.com/api/v4/autocompletes?user_key=[INSERT_Key]&query=mayfield&collection_ids=principal.investors&limit=10'

--finding categories that match "bio"
curl --request GET 'https://api.crunchbase.com/api/v4/autocompletes?user_key=[INSERT_Key]&query=bio&collection_ids=categories&limit=10'

--finding categories and category groups that match "mobile payment"
curl --request GET 'https://api.crunchbase.com/api/v4/autocompletes?user_key=[INSERT_Key]&collection_ids=categories,category_groups&query=mobile%20payment'

--finding companies (e.g. organizations that have "company" facet) that match "airbnb"
curl --request GET 'https://api.crunchbase.com/api/v4/autocompletes?user_key=[INSERT_Key]&query=airbnb&collection_ids=organization.companies'

--finding countries and cities (e.g. locations that have either "country" or "city" facet) that match "united"
curl --request GET 'https://api.crunchbase.com/api/v4/autocompletes?user_key=[INSERT_Key]&query=united&limit=10&collection_ids=location.countries,location.cities'

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Autocomplete is NOT the same as disambiguation / matching

It's important to understand the difference between autocomplete and disambiguation/matching:

Autocomplete is intended to drive a human process to choose the entity based on what they have typed, and the presumption made is that people will type letters until they see the thing they're looking for.

On the other hand, disambiguation/matching takes as much information as possible and tries as hard as possible to return the most correct match.

Updated over 4 years ago

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