BODACC API in Node.js — French company notices

France publishes its company notices as open data, insolvency included. BODACC is served by the DILA through an Opendatasoft instance — no key, no signup — though the query language is Opendatasoft's rather than bespoke, which is the main thing to learn.

The families of notice

familleavis tells you what kind of event a record is: collective for procédures collectives (the risk signal), creation for registrations, modification for changes, radiation for removals, vente for sales of a fonds de commerce, and depot for the filing of annual accounts — the fact of filing, not the accounts themselves. Filter on it or you will mix an incorporation in with a liquidation.

Two traps

The jugement field is frequently a JSON-encoded string rather than an object, and its shape is not stable across years — parse defensively. And [ND] means "non disponible", a privacy redaction applied at source; it is a legitimate value, not missing data or a broken ingest.

Do not treat every collective notice as a failure

Sauvegarde means the company is NOT in cessation des paiements and is acting early — reading it as insolvency is simply wrong. Redressement judiciaire means cessation des paiements with a prospect of recovery. Liquidation judiciaire means recovery is judged impossible. A single boolean "has insolvency notice" flag collapses all three and misprices risk in both directions.

Where a multi-country layer helps

BODACC is free and authoritative; if France is your only market, query it directly. What you take on is the notice families and their historical drift, jugement shape changes, SIREN linkage, and a separate integration per country. Prometiam serves the same French insolvency normalised alongside seven other markets — corporate only, never personal.

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Frequently asked questions

Is the BODACC API free?
Yes. BODACC is published as open data by the DILA through an Opendatasoft instance, with no API key or signup required. The query language is Opendatasoft's rather than bespoke.
What does familleavis mean in BODACC?
It is the category of the notice: collective for procedures collectives (insolvency), creation for new registrations, modification for changes, radiation for removals, vente for sales of a fonds de commerce, and depot for the filing of annual accounts. Filtering on it is essential or event types get mixed together.
What does [ND] mean in a BODACC record?
Non disponible - a privacy redaction applied at source by the publisher. It is a legitimate value rather than missing data or a broken ingest, and records containing it should not simply be discarded.
Is a sauvegarde notice the same as bankruptcy?
No. Sauvegarde means the company is NOT in cessation des paiements and is acting pre-emptively to address difficulties. Redressement judiciaire means cessation des paiements with a prospect of recovery, and liquidation judiciaire means recovery is judged impossible. Collapsing all three into one insolvency flag will misprice risk.