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IOL API endpoint
IOL sections API
Returns the verified IOL section inventory accepted by the headlines endpoint: news, sport, business, lifestyle, entertainment, technology, motoring, travel and opinion, their sub-sections, provincial news and the sister-title feeds.
GETapiKey1 credit/requestIOLpublicnews.sectionsResponseDoc
IOL/iol/sectionsEndpoint facts
- Method
- GET
- API path
- /iol/sections
- Auth
- apiKey
- Credits
- 1 credit/request
- Charged on
- Successful 2xx responses only
- Platform
- IOL
- Response schema
- #/definitions/publicnews.sectionsResponseDoc
How this endpoint behaves
Returns the verified section inventory accepted by /api/v1/iol/headlines: all 123 IOL section feeds confirmed live on 2026-09-25 (each answered with a feed whose newest story was dated 2026): news, news/africa, news/brics, news/crime-and-courts, news/education, news/energy, news/environment, news/feel-good, news/opinion, news/partnered, news/politics, news/politics/opinion, news/south-africa, news/south-africa/eastern-cape, news/south-africa/free-state, news/south-africa/gauteng, news/south-africa/kwazulu-natal, news/south-africa/limpopo, news/south-africa/mpumalanga, news/south-africa/north-west, news/south-africa/northern-cape, news/south-africa/western-cape, news/world, sport, sport/athletics, sport/betting, sport/boxing, sport/cricket, sport/cricket/domestic, sport/cricket/international, sport/cricket/proteas, sport/cricket/proteas-women, sport/golf, sport/horse-racing, sport/mma, sport/opinion, sport/rugby, sport/rugby/imbokodo, sport/rugby/international, sport/rugby/springboks, sport/rugby/super-rugby, sport/rugby/urc, sport/soccer, sport/soccer/bafana, sport/soccer/la-liga, sport/soccer/premier-league, sport/soccer/psl, sport/soccer/uefa-champions-league, sport/swimming, sport/tennis, business, business/economy, business/jobs, business/property, business/window-on-china, personal-finance, opinion, opinion/letters, entertainment, entertainment/books, entertainment/celebrity-news, entertainment/events, entertainment/movies, entertainment/music, entertainment/opinion, entertainment/royals, entertainment/streaming, entertainment/tv, entertainment/whats-on, entertainment/whats-on/cape-town, entertainment/whats-on/durban, entertainment/whats-on/joburg, entertainment/whats-on/pretoria, lifestyle, lifestyle/competitions, lifestyle/family, lifestyle/family/parenting, lifestyle/food-drink, lifestyle/food-drink/recipes, lifestyle/health, lifestyle/love-sex, lifestyle/love-sex/relationships, lifestyle/opinion, lifestyle/style-beauty, lifestyle/style-beauty/beauty, lifestyle/style-beauty/fashion, technology, technology/esports, technology/gadgets, technology/gaming, technology/mobile-apps, technology/opinion, technology/software-and-internet, motoring, motoring/f1-grand-prix, motoring/industry-news, motoring/latest-launches, motoring/motorsport, motoring/partnered, motoring/road-tests, travel, travel/africa, travel/partnered, travel/south-africa, travel/travel-tips, travel/world, matric, g20, government-at-work, capeargus, capeargus/news, capeargus/opinion, weekend-argus, weekend-argus/news, dailynews, dailynews/news, the-star, the-star/news, sunday-tribune, saturday-star, pretoria-news, pretoria-news/news, pretoria-news/opinion.
Each section includes a slug (the section path, which is also the value to pass as section), a display name (the breadcrumb, for example News > South Africa > Gauteng), and the section page url. Parent and child sections are separate values; a parent feed is IOL's own feed for that section and is not guaranteed to be a superset of its children. IOL publishes no complete machine-readable section list, so this is a verified subset rather than a claim of completeness: dormant sections (for example business/hybrid-working, whose newest story is from December 2025) are left out.
Sampled response
- Request, 14 Oct 2026
- GET /iol/sections
- Items in sections
- 123
- Fields filled in every checked item
- 3
| Field | Filled in, of 123 checked | Values in the sample |
|---|---|---|
| slug | 123 | |
| name | 123 | “News” and 122 other values |
| url | 123 | iol.co.za |
Request parameters
| Parameter | Type | Required | Default | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| x-api-key (header) | string | Yes | API key required |
cURL example
curl -X GET "https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1/iol/sections" \ -H "x-api-key: $CRAWLORA_API_KEY"
Example JSON response
{
"code": 200,
"data": {
"sections": [
{
"slug": "news",
"name": "News",
"url": "https://iol.co.za/news/"
},
{
"slug": "news/africa",
"name": "News > Africa",
"url": "https://iol.co.za/news/africa/"
}
]
}
}Request schema
No body schema
Response schema
#/definitions/publicnews.sectionsResponseDoc
| Field | Type | Required | Enum | Bounds | Example | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| data | newsplatform.SectionsResponse | No | ||||
| data.sections | array | No | ||||
| data.sections[].name | string | No | ||||
| data.sections[].slug | string | No | ||||
| data.sections[].url | string | No |
Code examples
Use environment variables for secrets and keep Crawlora API keys server-side.
curl -X GET "https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1/iol/sections" \
-H "x-api-key: $CRAWLORA_API_KEY"