Retrieve Companies Number using Company Name

Bulk Data Requests
1

Hi everyone,
Need your help, please.
So I´ve got a spreadsheet with several companies’ names and I´ll need to find their companies’ number.

creating an API that automatically searches from my list and then retrieves companies number is the solution?
already tried with python, but seems that the code isn´t correct :confused:

Cheers
Sara

2

Welcome - thanks for stating your overall goal:

I´ve got a spreadsheet with several companies’ names and I´ll need to find their companies’ number.

If you’re having trouble with code and want to stay in the spreadsheet you could download the bulk Companies House data files and process those to get company names from numbers.

Alternatively, search this forum, you’ll find other people wanting to accomplish the same goal e.g. on this thread:

https://forum.aws.chdev.org/t/how-to-get-data-into-a-spreadsheet/324

I believe there are some spreadsheet-based tools / plugins for Companies House. I don’t have details though, sorry - try search.

If neither of those approaches helps, you’ll need to explain the detail. So that would be:

What it is you’re doing e.g. what system / what code you’re using (simplified if possible)
What part of Companies House API you’re accessing
The data you send
The errors / data you get back.

Don’t put any of your API key details / passwords in your post though!

Good luck.

3

Sara

You might find this link helpful

GitHub - previsedigital/companies_house: Companies’ House API

or

Search · companies house · GitHub

I can’T vouch for any of the material but most of what reaches Github does work!

If you would prefer not reinvent existing wheels you could also reach out to my team at

admin@statbooks.co.uk

StatBooks® puts the Companies House Register at your fingertips! We have a Names & Numbers API that auto populates Names from Numbers.

4

Hi, i am looking to perform similar tasks, i.e., search for company registration number based on company name.

The API page shows this request: https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk/search/companies.

However, i am not sure where to put in the parameter q which in my case will be the company name.

Can someone help me on this please? Thanks,

5

The documentation (for Companies Search - there are other types) is here:

https://developer-specs.company-information.service.gov.uk/companies-house-public-data-api/reference/search/search-companies

When you say “am not sure where to put in the parameter q”:

https://api.company-information.service.gov.uk/search/companies?q=mycompanyname

… where mycompanyname is the thing you’re searching for. And of course as it’s a URL parameter you will need to appropriately encode this (URL encode) - although depending on the tool you’re using to communicate with the API that might be done automatically, and normally there are mechanisms available to do that for you (e.g. in javascript encodeURIComponent).

  • … which brings us to the second answer which is “it depends” - there will be differences between different languages, tools and environments for exactly how you specify and request a URL (pretty much all will allow you just to put the whole thing in as text, if you encode parameters yourself though).
6

yeah, that worked. thank you!