laws-africa/lawsafrica-cli

Laws.Africa Legal Knowledge Platform commandline tool # Laws.Africa CLI `lawsafrica` is a command-line client for the Laws.Africa Legal Knowledge Platform. This CLI covers the Legislation Content API and Knowledge Base API. It is designed for AI agents and shell automation: API responses are emitted as raw JSON on standard output, while diagnostics go to standard error. ## Get started Create a free account at platform.laws.africa, then create an API key in the API keys page. Install the CLI from PyPI with pip: ```sh python -m pip install --upgrade lawsafrica-cli ``` Or run it without installing anything permanently, using uv: ```sh uvx --from lawsafrica-cli lawsafrica --help ``` Set the API key in your shell before making API requests: ```sh export LAWSAFRICA_API_KEY='your-api-key' lawsafrica --help ``` With `uvx`, the same command is: ```sh uvx --from lawsafrica-cli lawsafrica places list ``` Run `lawsafrica docs` for a short explanation of works, expressions, FRBR URIs, and links to the official developer documentation. Command-group help also links to the relevant API reference. ## Places Places are shared by the legislation and Knowledge Base APIs. List them to find a country or locality code, then pass it as `--place` when listing legislation expressions or as `--frbr-place` when retrieving Knowledge Base passages: ```sh lawsafrica places list lawsafrica places get za-cpt ``` ## Legislation All Content API commands are under `lawsafrica legislation`. The API resolves a work FRBR URI to its current expression where necessary, but the CLI calls the returned resources expressions. List commands fetch one page by default. For a quick count, ask for one result and use the API's `count` field. Use `--all` only when the whole result set is needed; it follows every API-supplied pagination link. ```sh lawsafrica legislation expressions list --place za-cpt --page-size 1 lawsafrica legislation expressions list --place za-cpt --uncommenced --page-size 1 lawsafrica legislation expressions list --place za- …