Answers · Chicago building permits
How do I query Chicago permits with the Socrata API?
GET https://data.cityofchicago.org/resource/ydr8-5enu.json with SoQL parameters, no API key. $select picks columns, $where filters, $order sorts, $limit caps the response. Dates compare as strings, so a week is issue_date >= '2026-07-20' AND issue_date < '2026-07-27'. The whole query goes in the query string — nothing to sign up for, nothing to install.
The query below is the one this site runs to render a week of one trade. It is reproduced verbatim from the code that fetches it, so it works as written once the dates and the trade clause are filled in.
Two things that bite: string comparison on permit_type is exact, including the en dash in the Express Permit Program label, and work_description matching needs upper() because the City's casing is not consistent.
How this is measured
- Dataset
- ydr8-5enu
- Publisher
- City of Chicago
- Filter
- The live query behind this site's weekly permit pages, capped at 1,000 records per read and re-read hourly. Parameters are static strings; no user input reaches the query.
- Measured
- No count on this page — it describes the file and the query, and carries no figure to date.
The query
$select=permit_,permit_type,issue_date,street_number,street_direction,street_name,work_description,reported_cost $where=issue_date >= '2026-07-20' AND issue_date < '2026-07-27' AND upper(work_description) LIKE '%ROOF%' $order=issue_date DESC, reported_cost DESC $limit=1000
Permit Signal
Permit Signal runs a query like this every morning so a contractor does not have to. The first delivery is three real records, free, with the government source link on every row.