Project

canlii

0.0
The project is in a healthy, maintained state
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A lightweight Ruby client for accessing Canadian legal information via the CanLII API
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 Popularity
Downloads
119
Stars
1
Forks
0
Watchers
0
 Releases
Current version
0.1.1
Total releases
1
First release
2025-07-01
Latest release
2025-07-01
 Development
Primary Language
Ruby
Licenses
MIT
Average date of last 50 commits
2025-07-01
Reverse Dependencies
0

 Dependencies

Development

minitest
~> 5.0
rake
~> 13.0
rubocop-rails-omakase
~> 1.0
webmock
~> 3.0

Runtime

activemodel
>= 6.0
activesupport
>= 6.0
http
~> 5.0
 Project Readme

CanLII Ruby

A lightweight Ruby client for accessing Canadian legal information via the CanLII API.

API Access

To use this gem, you'll need a CanLII API key. Request one by filling out the feedback form.

API Limitations

The CanLII API provides:

  • Access to metadata only (not full document text)
  • 5,000 queries per day
  • 2 requests per second
  • 1 request at a time

Support

CanLII does not provide user support for the API. Please:

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'canlii'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install canlii

Configuration

Basic Configuration

require 'canlii'

CanLII.configure do |config|
  config.api_key = ENV["CANLII_API_KEY"]
  config.logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)
  config.timeout = 30 # Optional: timeout in seconds (default: 30)
end

Rails Configuration

In config/initializers/canlii.rb:

CanLII.configure do |config|
  config.api_key = ENV["CANLII_API_KEY"]
  config.logger = Rails.logger
  config.timeout = 30 # Optional: timeout in seconds (default: 30)
end

Usage

List All Databases

databases = CanLII::Database.all
databases.each do |db|
  puts "#{db.database_id}: #{db.name} (#{db.jurisdiction})"
end

Browse Cases

# Recent Supreme Court cases
cases = CanLII::Case.browse("csc-scc", limit: 10)
cases.each do |c|
  puts "#{c.citation}: #{c.title}"
end

# Cases from last 30 days
recent = CanLII::Case.browse("onca", 
  published_after: 30.days.ago,
  limit: 100
)

Find Specific Case

# Find returns nil if not found
case_detail = CanLII::Case.find("csc-scc", "2024scc1")

# Find! raises error if not found
case_detail = CanLII::Case.find!("csc-scc", "2024scc1")

Language Support

# Temporary language switch
CanLII.with_language("fr") do
  databases = CanLII::Database.all  # Returns French names
  cases = CanLII::Case.browse("qcca")  # Quebec cases
end

# Permanent language switch
CanLII.configuration.language = "fr"

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/ajaynomics/canlii-ruby.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.