How to get overall category of business in JSON object after request in Yelp API

Question

In the category list in the documentation, there are overall categories (Food, Restaurants, Health), and many sub categories within them. However, when I make a request and parse the JSON, the only categories that are returned are the sub-categories.

Even the example json in the documentation doesn't have the overall categories "categories": [ [ "Local Flavor", "localflavor" ], [ "Mass Media", "massmedia" ] ],

If I search for restaurants, the categories will return things like "italian, french, american", but not "restaurants". Is there a way to get the overall category in the json so I can use it?

Thanks

Answer 1

Use the search API instead, and set a category_filter according to this list.
This should give you all the "objects" in the given category.

Something like this http://api.yelp.com/v2/search?category_filter=restaurants.

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Update

It seems like I misunderstood a little... so you want to get the root category.
(eg. for "italian"–>"restaurants", "french"->restaurants, "car dealers"->automotive etc.)

I think you have two options:

1. Hardcode the dictionary of all restaurant subcategories (french,italian...) into a file (plist, json, whatever) and after getting the "object" you could check if the subcategory is included in the hard-coded subcategories dictionary.
2. Use the search API and provide the bussiness id and category_filter set to restaurants and check if it returns any result - if not, then the object is not in the right category.

The reason why I am suggesting to hard code it is, because Yelp doesn't provide an API to get complete list of categories.

In my opinion I would try the approach #1, because it is less intensive on the network side and a dictionary is blazing fast.

But to answer your initial question, no it is not possible to have the root category in the JSON file.