Sandbox & production

Integrate against the sandbox with fixed test names; go live by changing the host and the key.

View as MarkdownWhole product as one Markdown fileOpenAPI

The two environments

	Sandbox	Production
Host	`https://sandbox.offendersearch.app`	`https://api.offendersearch.app`
Keys accepted	`os_test_…` only	`os_live_…` only
Data	Fixed test scenarios per product (fixed names, fixed outcomes)	Real records
Billing	Never	Per call, per live source, per document, per monitor — extras itemised in `meterEvents[]`, totals in the dashboard
Response shape	Identical to production, plus `"sandbox": true`	Production
Rate limits	Lower; enough to integrate	Account limits; `429` with `Retry-After` when exceeded

Note. A test key sent to the live host, or a live key sent to the sandbox, answers 401. The prefix tells you which host a key belongs to.

Fixed test names

Each product publishes the test names the sandbox answers and what each one returns — a clear result, a possible match, a confirmed match, an incomplete source, an error. Use them to exercise every branch of your code before you spend a live call.

Switching to production

# development
export OFFENDERSEARCH_BASE=https://sandbox.offendersearch.app
export OFFENDERSEARCH_API_KEY=os_test_…

# production
export OFFENDERSEARCH_BASE=https://api.offendersearch.app
export OFFENDERSEARCH_API_KEY=os_live_…

Nothing in the request or the response parsing changes. Before the switch, run the production checklist.