This is the documentation for version 2.4 of the Church of England CMS API.
The CMS API v2.4 allows communication with the CMS database via RESTful API calls.
For the most part, it is a restricted API and requires suitable approval before access it granted. A limited number of endpoints providing publicly available datasets are accessible via a user-linked access_key only.
Please contact your CMS administrator to request access credentials, or generate an access_key for publicly available endpoints via the 'Manage Account' section of the Portal.
All responses from the CMS API v2.4 are in JSON format.
Released March 2025
The list of default returned building fields has now been updated to include the church and school specific building fields.
For more information on what is now available, please refer to the default returned fields list on the following API endpoint:
Released January 2025
In this minor version update, the fields known_as_forenames and known_as_surname have been added to the default returned contact fields. The field informal_name has been deprecated.
For more information on GET contacts, please refer to the following API endpoint:
Released October 2024
This minor version update to the CMS API introduces publicly available datasets, where a limited
number of endpoints are accessible via a user-linked access_key only.
In addition, the term 'API Key', used in previous versions of this API documentation, has been replaced with 'Secret Key' to improve clarity.
Released June 2023
The following new endpoints have been added to the CMS API in this minor version update:
Released November 2016
Version 2 of the CMS API brings forth a number of improvements and new functionality that have been developed based on the feedback of version 1 users.
This includes:
EOL 25th July 2019
We wish to inform you that it has been decided to set the API V1 End of Life to 11th January 2019. All existing users of API v1 are recommend to make plans soon, to switch to API v2 before this time.
Please note: due to the request of a couple of users, we have kept the API V1 running for several months after the planned switch off date. However, version 1 will be switched off from 25th July 2019 and this date is now final.
Version 1 will remain operational until 11th January 2019, we would strongly suggest that version 1 users upgrade to version 2 of the API as soon as is feasible due to the number of improvements and additional functionality version 2 introduces.
From this point forward, no further API credentials for version 1 shall be issued.