croa.com APIcroa.com ↗
Access 5000+ Canadian Railway Office of Arbitration awards, search by keyword, filter by case range or party, and retrieve arbitrator metadata via 8 endpoints.
No input parameters required.
curl -X GET 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/514dfc91-459e-44e3-ad0c-d3a3ebb95e33/get_home' \ -H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY'
Get navigation links from the CROA English homepage.
No input parameters required.
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"title": "string, page title",
"navigation_links": "array of objects with text and url keys"
},
"sample": {
"data": {
"title": "CROA Home",
"navigation_links": [
{
"url": "http://search.freefind.com/find.html?si=8864688&pid=a",
"text": "Click here to search all railway awards"
},
{
"url": "http://croa.com/Schedules%20with%20awards/May-Sept2025Awards.htm",
"text": "Latest awards: May to September 2025"
},
{
"url": "http://croa.com/LINKPDF.html",
"text": "All awards (1965 to date)"
}
]
},
"status": "success"
}
}About the croa.com API
The CROA API provides structured access to over 5,000 Canadian Railway Office of Arbitration awards across 8 endpoints, covering case metadata, PDF links, arbitrator names, parties, and dispute subjects. The get_awards_index endpoint returns the full awards catalog with case numbers and PDF URLs, while get_award_detail surfaces per-case metadata including arbitrator, parties, and a text snippet extracted directly from the award document.
Award Discovery and Retrieval
The get_awards_index endpoint returns the complete catalog of CROA awards — over 5,000 records — each with a case_number, display_text, and pdf_url. For targeted lookups, get_awards_by_range accepts start_range and end_range integer parameters and returns only awards whose case numbers fall within that inclusive range. The get_latest_awards endpoint retrieves the most recently published awards, each record including a date, description, and pdf_url.
Case-Level Detail and Text Extraction
get_award_detail accepts a plain numeric case_number (e.g. '5204') and returns the award's pdf_url, arbitrator, parties, subject, and a full_text_snippet of up to 5,000 characters extracted from the PDF when a parsing library is available. Note that suffixed case number variants such as '4881 -S' are not supported and will return an input_not_found response — only standard numeric identifiers work.
Search and Filtering
search_awards accepts a query string and returns matching results with title, url, and snippet fields via the integrated FreeFind search engine. filter_awards_by_party narrows the latest awards by a case-insensitive match on the description field, using common party abbreviations like 'CNR', 'CPKCR', or 'TCRC'.
Members and Navigation
get_members returns the list of member railway companies and unions participating in CROA, with each member's name and available contact or address details. get_home returns the site's top-level navigation structure as an array of link objects with text and url keys.
- Build a searchable database of Canadian railway labour arbitration decisions by ingesting the full awards index from
get_awards_index. - Track recent arbitration outcomes for CN Rail or CP by running
filter_awards_by_partywith identifiers like'CNR'or'CPKCR'. - Analyze arbitrator workload and decision patterns by aggregating the
arbitratorfield across multipleget_award_detailcalls. - Monitor newly published CROA awards by polling
get_latest_awardsand alerting on newcase_numberentries. - Build a case-range explorer that lets users step through specific decades of awards using
get_awards_by_rangewith configurablestart_rangeandend_rangeinputs. - Compile a directory of CROA member organizations with contact information using
get_membersfor labour relations research. - Keyword-search awards by dispute subject — e.g. discipline, scheduling, benefits — using the
queryparameter insearch_awards.
| Tier | Price | Credits/month | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 100 | 5 req/min |
| Hobby | $30/mo | 1,000 | 20 req/min |
| Developer | $100/mo | 5,000 | 250 req/min |
One credit = one API call regardless of which marketplace API you call. Exceeding the rate limit returns a 429 response. Authenticate with the X-API-Key header.
Does CROA provide an official developer API?+
What does `get_award_detail` return, and are all case number formats supported?+
pdf_url, arbitrator, parties, subject, and a full_text_snippet of up to 5,000 characters. Only plain numeric case numbers (e.g. '100', '5204') are supported. Suffixed variants like '4881 -S' are not currently handled and will return an input_not_found response. You can fork this API on Parse and revise it to add support for suffixed case number formats.Does `filter_awards_by_party` search the full historical awards index?+
get_latest_awards, matching against the description field. The full historical index is not searchable by party name through a dedicated endpoint. You can fork this API on Parse and revise it to add a party-filter endpoint that works across the complete awards catalog.Is the full text of every award available through the API?+
get_award_detail returns a full_text_snippet of up to 5,000 characters when PDF text extraction is available, along with structured fields like arbitrator, parties, and subject. Full-document text extraction across all 5,000+ awards in bulk is not currently supported. You can fork this API on Parse and revise it to add a batch text-extraction endpoint.How current are the awards returned by `get_latest_awards`?+
get_latest_awards reflects what appears on CROA's latest schedule page at the time of the request, including case_number, date, description, and pdf_url. Freshness depends on how frequently CROA updates that page — there is no guaranteed refresh interval, and the API does not cache a fixed historical snapshot.