Without JavaScript

The JSON files in data/ are the source of truth; the TypeScript only adds types and helpers. You can read them from any language:

• from the npm package (node_modules/belgica/data/);
• as a git submodule;
• from a raw URL pinned to a release tag.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pieterjanscheir/belgica/v0.6.1/data/cantons.json

Pin a tag rather than main, so the data only changes when you choose to upgrade.

Python

For Python there is a package with the data and the helpers: see Python. To read the files yourself instead:

import json
from urllib.request import urlopen

BASE = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pieterjanscheir/belgica/v0.6.1/data"

cantons = json.load(urlopen(f"{BASE}/cantons.json"))

def cantons_for_municipality(refnis: str) -> list[dict]:
    return [c for c in cantons if any(m["municipality"] == refnis for m in c["municipalities"])]

print([c["id"] for c in cantons_for_municipality("44021")])  # gent-1 … gent-5

Interest rates

Periods are inclusive on both ends and dates are YYYY-MM-DD, so string comparison works:

rates = json.load(urlopen(f"{BASE}/interest-rates.json"))

def interest_rate(day: str, kind: str, contract_after_20130316: bool = False) -> float | None:
    for p in rates[kind]["periods"]:
        if p["from"] <= day <= p["to"]:
            older = p.get("rateForContractsBefore20130316")
            return older if older is not None and not contract_after_20130316 else p["rate"]
    return None

CSV

Every release has a zip with the data as JSON and as CSV tables (UTF-8, comma-separated), with the schemas and datapackage.json. Nested values are tables of their own: a court's contacts are in court-contacts.csv, keyed by court id; a canton's municipalities in canton-municipalities.csv. The boundaries' geometry isn't tabular and stays in the JSON; canton-boundaries.csv and arrondissement-boundaries.csv have the NGI's identifiers. court-locations.csv has each point as a longitude and a latitude column. In Excel, open them with Data > From Text/CSV.

Files

File	Contents
data/judicial-areas.json	The 5 judicial areas (courts of appeal)
data/arrondissements.json	The 12 judicial arrondissements and their judicial area
data/cantons.json	All 162 judicial cantons
data/canton-boundaries.json	The boundary of every canton as GeoJSON geometry (23 MB)
data/arrondissement-boundaries.json	The boundary of every arrondissement as GeoJSON geometry (8 MB)
data/municipalities.json	The 565 municipalities with REFNIS code, province and region
data/regions.json	The 3 regions, named in three languages
data/provinces.json	The 10 provinces, with their region
data/courts.json	Every court, division and seat on the courts' portal
data/court-locations.json	A GeoJSON point for most justices of the peace
data/prisons.json	The prisons and detention houses
data/houses-of-justice.json	The houses of justice of the Flemish and French Communities
data/postal-codes.json	Every postal code with the municipality it belongs to
data/interest-rates.json	Legal and commercial-transaction interest rates
data/public-holidays.json	The rules for the ten legal public holidays

Generated from data/courts.json and data/cantons.json, for apps that need only part of them (see only the courts you need):

File	Contents
data/courts/<type>.json	The courts of one type, as summaries without contacts
data/courts/<type>/<arrondissement>.json	The courts of one type in one arrondissement
data/courts/<type>/judicial-area/<area>.json	The courts of one type without an arrondissement
data/courts/details/<id>.json	One court's contacts, opening hours, website, ECLI and sources
data/courts/index.json	Each court id and the file it is in
data/cantons/summaries.json	The cantons without their territory
data/cantons/territory.json	Each canton's territory

These are built when the package is, so they're in the npm package and the release zip but not in the git repository: read them from node_modules/belgica/data/ or from a CDN that serves the npm package, pinned to a version (https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/belgica@0.6.1/data/courts/index.json).

The shapes are described on the data pages and in the API reference.

Licence

The data is CC BY 4.0: reuse it freely, including commercially, with credit to this project and to the sources listed for each dataset. Municipality data © Statbel; canton and arrondissement boundaries and court locations © National Geographic Institute (NGI).