World Bank Open Data — Scraping & Data Extraction

The World Bank API returns a two-element JSON array containing metadata and data. You parse the second element to extract indicator values, filtering for the newest non-null entries for clean time series.

To handle World Bank API pagination, you query the endpoints with format=json and iterate through pages, parsing the data array element to aggregate complete results across multiple pages for your analytics pipeline.

You fetch GDP and population indicators for multiple countries by querying the multi-country World Bank endpoints with format=json, specifying date ranges, and extracting the newest non-null values from the data element.

The World Bank API response includes null values for missing dates. You must filter these out during parsing by checking for non-null values, ensuring you extract the newest available data point for accurate time series.

You can extract World Bank indicators for specific date ranges by passing date parameters to the API endpoint with format=json, then parsing the data element to retrieve the requested time series values.

Enforcing format=json is required because the World Bank API defaults to XML. Appending format=json to your endpoint ensures a parseable JSON response with the metadata and data array structure for extraction.