Guide 2.11: Developer Guide

Filtering Questions by Year

Syllabuses change over time. Many educational applications allow students to practice questions from a specific year to gauge how the difficulty of the examination has evolved.

The Year Parameter

2.11.1

To restrict your results to a specific year, use the year query parameter. The API expects a valid 4-digit integer (e.g., 2022).

GET https://sdashapi.com/api/v1/q?year=2021

A Warning About Isolation

2.11.2

It is rarely useful to query the API using only the year parameter. If you execute the query above, you will receive a random question from 2021, but it could be from any subject (Math, Commerce, Yoruba) and any exam board (JAMB, WAEC). You almost always want to combine the year filter with the subject filter, which we will cover shortly.

Historical Coverage

2.11.3

SdashAPI guarantees comprehensive coverage from 2001 to 2026 for core subjects. However, for niche subjects, data from early 2000s might be sparse. If you request 50 questions for a niche subject in a specific year, and only 30 exist in the database, the API will safely return those 30 instead of throwing an error.

Targeting specific boards?

Next, learn how to separate UTME questions from WASSCE questions.

Next Guide: Filtering by Exam →
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