Sandbox: trial the OD API

The sandbox environment emulates the Oxford Dictionaries API and gives you the chance to evaluate its functionality. This provides a great opportunity to try the API before moving to a paid-plan Access to the Sandbox includes a finite amount of 500 calls to all languages and endpoints for the dictionary datasets, and is limited to the first letter of the alphabet.

For example: Querying the words endpoint in English:

✅ GET https://od-api-sandbox.oxforddictionaries.com/api/v2/words/en-gb?q=apple

Returns successful response (200 response code) because word begins with first letter of the alphabet.

❌ GET https://od-api-sandbox.oxforddictionaries.com/api/v2/words/en-gb?q=banana

Does not return a successful response (404 response code) because word does not begin with first letter of the alphabet.

Note that a 404 response for querying a letter that is not the first in the alphabet would not occur on the production API and is only the behavior of the Sandbox.

See all available languages here. See all endpoints here.

First letter of the alphabet

The first letter of the alphabet for all languages that use the Latin alphabet is a. Here are the first letters of the alphabet or equivalent for other languages offered on the API:

Language Language Code First Letter Equivalent
Arabic AR أ
Greek EL α
Gujarati GU અ
Hindi HI अ
Marathi MR अ
Russian RU а
Tamil TA அ
Telugu TE అ
Tatar TT а
Urdu UR ا

Accessing the Sandbox

You will need your unique app key and app id to access the Sandbox. Please view them here or signup to generate these credentials. You can access the Sandbox via the documentation or your own code or test tool (e.g. Python code, Postman, CURL etc…) 

     
  1.  import requests 
  2.  import json 
  3.  app_id = "<your_app_id>" 
  4.  app_key = "<your_app_key>" 
  5.  language = "en-gb" 
  6.  word_id = "example" 
  7.  url = "https://od-api-sandbox.oxforddictionaries.com:443/api/v2/entries/" + language + "/" + word_id.lower() 
  8.  r = requests.get(url, headers={"app_id": <your_app_id>, "app_key": <your_app_key>})
Sample Entries request in Python, using the first letter of the alphabet for the “word_id”, your App ID and App Key

Understanding your usage

You will be emailed once you have used 50% of your limit and again when you have reached your limit. After you have reached your limit you will receive a 429 error code. See also: HTTP Status Codes