Export records from a REDCap project via the REDCap API including longitudinal event data
domain: project-redcap.org (REDCap API documentation) · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Authenticate by including the project's API token (token field) in every POST request body; obtain the token from the REDCap project's API section under My Projects
POST to https://{your-institution-redcap}/api/ with content=record, action=export, format=json (or csv/xml), and type=flat to retrieve one row per record-event combination in longitudinal projects
For longitudinal projects, include the events parameter with a comma-separated list of unique event names to filter to specific arms/events; omitting it returns all events and automatically includes the redcap_event_name column
To export only specific instruments, pass forms as a comma-separated list of instrument names; to export specific fields, use the fields parameter instead
Use the dateRangeBegin and dateRangeEnd parameters (format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS) to retrieve only records modified within a window, enabling incremental extraction
For large projects, paginate by combining the records parameter (specific record IDs) with batching logic, or use exportRecordsTyped for type-cast numeric values
Known gotchas
The flat export type produces one row per record per event; the eav type produces one attribute-value row per field and is more suitable for sparse longitudinal data
API tokens grant the same permissions as the REDCap user who generated them; a token from a user without export rights will return an error code 1 (insufficient privileges)
Checkbox fields are exported as separate columns suffixed with the option code (e.g., field_name___1, field_name___2); raw values are 0/1 regardless of the label parameter
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