GCC Open Data Search (Qatar, Bahrain)

Search the official Qatar (data.gov.qa) and Bahrain (data.gov.bh) open data portals and get one clean, normalised record per dataset: title, description (HTML stripped), publisher, themes and keywords, licence as stated by the portal, last-modified date, record count, API and CSV/JSON export links, the dataset page URL and a ready-made attribution string. Built for developers and AI agents that need to discover official Gulf open datasets and credit them properly.

What it does

• Calls each portal's public Opendatasoft Explore API v2.1: GET {portal}/api/explore/v2.1/catalog/datasets with where=search("<query>"), order_by=modified desc, limit and offset paging.
• Optionally fetches up to 5 sample rows per dataset from /catalog/datasets/{dataset_id}/records?limit=5.
• Polite by design: sequential requests (about 1 per second), a descriptive user-agent, retries with backoff on HTTP 429/5xx.
• If a portal answers HTTP 403, the run fails with a clear message. The actor never uses proxies or other workarounds to get around access controls.
• Metadata only (plus optional samples). No login, no scraping, no personal data.

Note: the UAE federal portal (opendata.fcsc.gov.ae) blocks requests from outside the UAE and bayanat.ae has no public API, so the UAE is not supported.

Input

Field	Meaning
query	Free-text search; empty returns the newest datasets
portals	qatar, bahrain (default both)
maxItems	1-1000 datasets in total (default 50)
includeRecordsSample	Add up to 5 sample rows per dataset (default false; one extra request per dataset)
language	Optional two-letter language filter, e.g. en

Output example

Illustrative values only:

{
  "portal": "qatar",
  "dataset_id": "population-by-nationality",
  "title": "Population by Nationality",
  "description": "Mid-year population estimates & shares.",
  "publisher": "Planning and Statistics Authority",
  "theme": ["Demographics"],
  "keywords": ["population", "census"],
  "license": "CC BY 4.0",
  "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "modified": "2026-09-30T08:15:00+00:00",
  "records_count": 120,
  "api_url": "https://www.data.gov.qa/api/explore/v2.1/catalog/datasets/population-by-nationality",
  "export_urls": {"csv": ".../exports/csv", "json": ".../exports/json"},
  "portal_url": "https://www.data.gov.qa/explore/dataset/population-by-nationality/",
  "attribution": "Source: Planning and Statistics Authority via Qatar Open Data Portal, licence CC BY 4.0"
}

Pricing (pay-per-event)

Event	Price (proposed)
One dataset record returned (Apify's default dataset-item event)	USD 0.002

Each dataset record written to the output is charged once through Apify's built-in dataset-item event. Prices are set in Apify Console and can change.

Licences and attribution

Each dataset carries its own licence, shown in the license / license_url fields exactly as the portal states them (it may be empty). Check each dataset's licence field before reusing the data, and credit the publisher; the attribution field helps. The actor reports "not stated" rather than guessing. This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government entity. Takedown requests are honoured within 24 hours.

Limits

Depends on portal availability and portal-side rate limits. Dataset counts change over time.