Development status

The PDG API tools supporting programmatic access to PDG data are still under development and are currently only available for testing as a beta software release with limited functionality.

You are invited to try out these new tools, but please be aware that this is software under development and that there will be bugs. At this stage there is no guarantee that the data returned by any of the API tools is correct, so please do not use data provided by the present version for any scientific work or publication without carefully checking each data item you retrieve.

While we will try to minimize changes in the JSON file structure, schema changes of the SQLite database file, and interface changes in the Python API package, such changes may still happen if deemed necessary to support future development. As a result, future releases may or may not be compatible with the present beta versions.

Features supported by the current version

Beta versions of
- REST API with pdgLive JSON download links
- Python API package
- SQLite files
Access to the data published in the Summary Tables (excluding footnotes), with access both via individual PDG Identifiers and navigation via particles to particle properties, branching fractions, and the corresponding Summary Table values

Features under development (not yet available in this beta version)

Improvement to contents of underlying data tables (e.g., some customary particle names are currently missing, some descriptions are incomplete or wrong, some flags are missing, etc)
Extension of Python API with more methods to directly access most frequently used particle properties, convenient navigation to decay products in a given decay, …
Processing of aliases such as \ell in branching fractions
Access to data published in the Particle Listings
Searching of PDG Identifiers and associated data (other than by low-level SQL querying of the data in the SQLite file)
Improved documentation, especially on using the SQLite database file
…