UK FCDO Foreign Travel Advice Scraper
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Pay per event
UK FCDO Foreign Travel Advice Scraper
Scrapes all 226 UK FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office) country travel advisories from the GOV.UK Content API. Outputs structured records with alert status, safety, health, entry requirements, and other per-country sections. No auth required — pure public API.
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Pay per event
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BowTiedRaccoon
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11 days ago
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Scrapes all 226 UK FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office) country travel advisories from the public GOV.UK Content API. Returns structured records with alert status, safety and security guidance, entry requirements, health advice, and other per-country sections. No authentication or proxy required.
What you get
Each record contains:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
country_name | Country name (e.g. "Japan travel advice") |
country_slug | URL slug used in the GOV.UK path (e.g. japan) |
alert_status | JSON array of alert status codes (e.g. ["avoid_all_travel_to_parts"]) |
summary_html | Short GOV.UK description of the travel advice page |
summary_text | Plain-text version of the summary |
sections | JSON array of all advice sections: [{title, slug, body_html, body_text}] |
entry_requirements_text | Plain-text entry requirements section (visa, passport, vaccination) |
safety_security_text | Plain-text safety and security section |
health_text | Plain-text health section |
first_published_at | ISO timestamp when the advice was first published |
public_updated_at | ISO timestamp of the most recent update |
latest_change_note | Description of the most recent change |
link | Canonical GOV.UK URL for the travel advice page |
source_id | GOV.UK content ID (UUID) |
Input
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
countrySlugs | array | — | Optional list of country slugs to scrape (e.g. ["japan", "france"]). Leave empty to scrape all ~226 countries. |
maxItems | integer | 10 | Maximum number of country records to return. Set to 0 or leave blank for no limit. |
Example inputs
Scrape a specific set of countries:
Scrape all countries:
How it works
- Fetches the FCDO country index from
https://www.gov.uk/api/content/foreign-travel-adviceto discover all country slugs (when no specific slugs are provided). - Fetches each country's travel advice document from
https://www.gov.uk/api/content/foreign-travel-advice/<slug>. - Extracts and flattens section content, change history, and alert status into structured records.
Data is sourced directly from the GOV.UK Content API — a public, unauthenticated government API with no rate limits beyond standard fair use. The scraper applies a 1 req/sec courtesy delay.
Use cases
- Duty of care / corporate travel management — monitor FCDO alert status changes for countries where employees travel
- Travel insurance and risk intelligence — combine with US State Department advisories for dual-government coverage
- Research and data journalism — track entry requirement changes (visa policy, vaccination rules) over time
- Comparison tools — pair with the US State Dept travel advisories scraper for side-by-side risk lens
Notes
- The GOV.UK Content API is a public government API with no authentication requirements.
sectionsandalert_statusfields are JSON strings; parse them withJSON.parse()in your workflow.- The
entry_requirements_textfield is particularly useful for visa/passport/vaccination data extraction. - The full-corpus run (~226 countries) takes approximately 4 minutes at 1 req/sec.
