CSV and JSON Data Downloads and API

Historic data for each monitoring station is available as a csv or JSON download. These are provided as a free service to our users, and are made available on an "as is" basis. No warranty whatsoever is made as to the accuracy or completeness of the data.

In particular, you should be aware of the following:

  1. The data in the download is all we have. If it isn't there, we don't have it. The earliest date in the download is the earliest date we have data for. So please don't email us asking if we have older data, or data for other locations, because we don't.
  2. The download data contains just a maximum, minimum and average level for each day. We don't store historical hourly data. So, again, there's no point asking us for it.
  3. No quality control is applied to the download data. It contains the raw data, before any alterations are made to exclude or correct for errors. So there will be errors. It is your responsibility to correct these, either manually or by writing your own error detecting algorithms.

Automated downloads

We don't object to people automating downloads of the level data. That's partly what it's for, as it places less load on the server than if you try to screenscrape the visible graphs. However, if you are going to retrieve the data programatically, then please follow these simple guidelines:

  1. Send a User Agent string that identifies your application, and ideally which includes the URL of your own website. This is required information; bots or scripts that send a blank User Agent string will be denied access to the downloads.
  2. The download data is updated daily, so there is no point retrieving the same location data more than once a day. Bots which repeatedly retrieve the same location data more often than is necessary will be blocked without warning. (We'll give you some leeway here for development and debugging purposes; bots will only be blocked if they display a long-term pattern of unnecessary requests).
  3. By the same token, don't load the data straight into a user-facing Javascript application. Request it once a day, and cache it locally at your end.
  4. The download data, like all original material on the River Levels website, is published under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA licence. This means that if you re-publish (eg, on your own website), you must attribute RiverLevels.uk as the source and you must make the data available to your own users under the same licence.
    Creative Commons License

Getting the data

The simplest way of getting the download data for any location is to click on the "Download long term data as csv" button at the bottom of every location page. That gives you a spreadsheet suitable for loading into Excel or similar software.

If you want to download the data directly without needing to visit the relevant page, you can do so by constructing a URL in this format:


So, for example, to get all the available data for the River Avon at Evesham, in csv format:


Or to get the most recent 10 days of data from the River Great Ouse at Ely, in JSON format:


Important! If you request all the data for a location, it will be sorted with the oldest date first. But if you request a limited number of days, it will be sorted most recent first.


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