DroneAPI

An automatic restful API for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's "Drone War" data. This tool only processes DRONE STRIKES, not all covert U.S. actions. Unconfirmed actions are included.

How to Use

Using the DroneAPI is simple. All you need to do is navigate your code to a valid instance (I personally recommend the Politiwatch-maintained instance at https://tbij.dronescout.org) and you'll be set! The root endpoint should provide you all the information you need to get started. If that's not enough, please refer to the endpoint documentation below.

User Interface

DroneAPI comes with a wonderful built-in interface for basic data exploration. It's visible at the document root, /.

Getting Totals

Often, all you want are totals and general statistics. To get these figures, simply navigate to /totals. You'll get back data which looks like the following:

{
    "maxChildrenKilled": 261,
    "maxCiviliansKilled": 1299,
    "maxInjured": 2349,
    "maxKilled": 8424,
    "minChildrenKilled": 202,
    "minCiviliansKilled": 613,
    "minInjured": 1557,
    "minKilled": 5819,
    "totalDroneStrikes": 1092,
    "updated": "2017-06-13 04:26:33"
}

Getting a List of Strikes

To get a list of all the strikes, navigate to /summary. You'll get an unabridged version of the following data back:

{
    "strikes": [
        "YEM139",
        "YEM138",
        "AFG208",
        ...
        "AFG345",
        "AFG347",
        "AFG346",
        "AFG252"
    ],
    "totals": {
        "maxChildrenKilled": 261,
        "maxCiviliansKilled": 1299,
        "maxInjured": 2349,
        "maxKilled": 8424,
        "minChildrenKilled": 202,
        "minCiviliansKilled": 613,
        "minInjured": 1557,
        "minKilled": 5819,
        "totalDroneStrikes": 1092
    },
    "updated": "2017-06-13 04:26:33"
}

Getting Data on a Particular Strike

To get the detailed data on a particular strike, navigate to /strike and include the strike ID as the parameter strike. An example relative request URL could look like the following: /strike?strike=AFG346. This should give the following response:

{
    "body": "Four members of Afghanistan's branch of Islamic State, including a commander of the group, were killed in a US strike in Nangarhar province, Attaullah Khogyani, the governor\u2019s spokesman, told Pajhwok. \u00a0\nA statement from the \"provincial police commandment\" reported in Khaama press said a drone strike killed three members of the group, including a local leader, identified as Asadullah.\u00a0\nThe date of the strike was not clear, but both media sites reported it on May 29.",
    "date": "29 May 2017",
    "index": "AFG346",
    "location": "Spina Zhai, Nazian, Nangarhar, Afghanistan",
    "maxKilled": 4,
    "minKilled": 3,
    "references": [
        "TBIJ spreadsheet",
        "http://www.khaama.com/us-drone-strike-kills-isis-leader-and-his-2-fighters-in-east-of-afghanistan-02814",
        "http://www.pajhwok.com/en/2017/05/29/4-daesh-rebels-including-commander-killed-nangarhar"
    ],
    "stats": [
        "3-4 reported killed"
    ],
    "supplemental": {
        "maxChildrenKilled": 0,
        "maxCiviliansKilled": 0,
        "maxInjured": 0,
        "maxStrikes": 1,
        "minChildrenKilled": 0,
        "minCiviliansKilled": 0,
        "minInjured": 0,
        "minStrikes": 1,
        "usaConfirmed": false,
        "usaIsOnlySource": false
    },
    "type": "US strike",
    "updated": "2017-06-13 04:23:51"
}

Note that only strikes which took place after 1 Jan 2017 will have a non-null body.

Getting the Latest Strike

To get the latest strike, simply navigate to the endpoint /latest. You will be presented with the data of the latest strike in the same format as the strike endpoint.

How to Deploy Yourself

Run api.py with the working directory set to wherever you'd like the backup data (strikes.json) to be saved to. The server will start on port 8888 automatically. Remember to update strikeloader.js so that your API's URL is loaded instead!