Socrata was acquired by Tyler Technologies in 2018 and is now the Data and Insights division of Tyler. The platform is still powered by the same software formerly known as Socrata but you will see references to Data & Insights going forward.

The LIMIT Clause

The LIMIT parameter controls the total number of rows returned, and it defaults to 1,000 records per request. It can be used either alone, or with OFFSET in order to page through a dataset.

For example, if you wanted to only return the top ten strongest earthquakes, you could use LIMIT in conjunction with $order:

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When combined with an aggregation via $group, LIMIT is applied after the aggregation. For example, if the aggregation reduces a result set from 10,000 records to 100, the LIMIT is applied to the result set of 100, rather than the original records.

Note: Depending on the version of the API endpoint, it will have different maximums for LIMIT:

  • Version 2.0 endpoints have a maximum $limit of 50,000
  • Version 2.1 and 3.0 endpoints have no maximum

Details are available in the API documentation for each API. Make sure you pick a limit appropriate to the speed of your connection, as HTTP calls will time out and payloads for high LIMITs can be very large.