The $query Parameter

The $query parameter allows you to combine multiple SoQL clauses together into a single parameter, for convenience. Similar to SQL, clauses must be specified in a specific order:

SELECT
WHERE
ORDER BY
GROUP BY
LIMIT
OFFSET

Note that unlike SQL, there is no FROM clause.

For example, you could combine $select and $where parameters together as follows:

https://soda.demo.socrata.com/resource/4tka-6guv.json?$query=SELECT location, magnitude WHERE magnitude > 4.2

For a full listing of the functionality available in SoQL, check out the the SoQL documentation.