Buildings

The v1 building resources expose stable Gapwise identities for recognized campus buildings across 13 supported universities. Identity/search coverage does not imply that every entrance, indoor path, floor, or accessibility detail has been surveyed.

List and search

GET https://api.gapwise.ca/v1/buildings

Supported query parameters:

Parameter	Meaning
`university`	Target university identifier (e.g. `carleton`, `uoft`, `tmu`, `mcmaster`, etc.; defaults to `uoft`)
`campus`	Target campus identifier (e.g. `carleton`, `utm`, `st-george`, `scarborough`; defaults to `utm`)
`q`	Case-insensitive substring search across canonical code, name, and aliases
`category`	`academic`, `residence`, or `facility`
`limit`	Page size, 1–100; defaults to 50
`offset`	Zero-based collection offset

Example for Carleton University:

curl 'https://api.gapwise.ca/v1/buildings?university=carleton&limit=20'

Example for U of T Mississauga (default):

curl 'https://api.gapwise.ca/v1/buildings?q=instructional&category=academic&limit=20&offset=0'

Search normalizes Unicode before matching. Filters combine deterministically, and unknown or repeated query parameters return invalid_query rather than being silently ignored.

Resolve one building

GET https://api.gapwise.ca/v1/buildings/:building

The identifier may be a canonical Gapwise code, exact canonical name, or recognized alias. Ambiguous identifiers return HTTP 409 with error code ambiguous_building and candidate codes in error.details. Supply university (and optionally campus) as a query parameter if querying a non-default institution.

Carleton University example:

curl 'https://api.gapwise.ca/v1/buildings/ML?university=carleton'

UTM example:

curl https://api.gapwise.ca/v1/buildings/MN

Response shape

A collection response uses the normal v1 envelope:

{
  "data": [
    {
      "code": "MN",
      "name": "Maanjiwe nendamowinan",
      "category": "academic"
    }
  ],
  "meta": {
    "apiVersion": "v1",
    "dataVersion": "...",
    "requestId": "...",
    "pagination": {
      "limit": 50,
      "offset": 0,
      "count": 1,
      "total": 1,
      "nextOffset": null
    }
  }
}

Treat the example as illustrative; consume fields defined by the OpenAPI contract rather than hard-coding this reduced sample.

Provenance and accessibility

Building facts carry conservative provenance/verification information where relevant. A field that is unknown, inferred, or unavailable is intentionally different from a verified fact. Do not upgrade uncertain accessibility data to verified in downstream applications.

Building metadata can be cached according to the response’s Cache-Control header. X-Request-Id matches meta.requestId.