Retrieve current foreign per diem lodging and M&IE rates by country and location from the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Per Diem tool for federal travel outside the continental US

Steps

1. Use the Foreign Per Diem Rates tool at aoprals.state.gov (also mirrored at allowances.state.gov) rather than the GSA Per Diem API, which only covers domestic CONUS travel — foreign locations are set separately under DSSR Section 925.
2. Select or search for the target country from the tool's dropdown (typing the first letter jumps to that portion of the list) to list all locations within that country.
3. Read the location-level lodging and meals & incidental expenses (M&IE) rates separately, then note the combined daily maximum rate shown for each location.
4. Cross-check the effective month, since rates are set monthly and take effect the first day of each month — a rate looked up mid-month may already reflect a superseded prior-month value if cached.
5. If building an automated workflow, treat this as a scheduled parse of the published tables rather than a documented REST API, since no official Department of State API contract for these rates was found in current documentation, unlike GSA's domestic Per Diem API.
6. For destinations not listed individually, apply the country's Other location rate as the default, consistent with how the Foreign Per Diem tool structures undocumented cities.