# Best places for a life category

`POST https://api.astroway.info/v1/acg/best-places`

Rank cities against the astrocartography lines of a chart for one of the 19 life categories. Distance to a line is computed from the body hour angle and altitude rather than against a discretised polyline, so it is exact: the distance to a horizon line IS the altitude in degrees of arc, and a meridian line offset is the hour angle times cos(latitude). Supportive and challenging totals are returned separately with every contributing line and its distance, so a strong-but-turbulent city is distinguishable from an average one. Bundled GeoNames set of 34,028 places above 15,000 people. **Not geocoding**: a smaller town is absent from the ranking rather than ranked poorly, and an arbitrary place name cannot be resolved.

Group: Astro-Geography. Auth: `X-Api-Key` header. Operation ID: `acg_best-places`.

## Parameters

| Name | In | Required | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `fields` | query | no | string | Comma-separated dotted paths, relative to `data`, to keep in the response. A path is applied to every element of an array, so `planets.name` means the name of each planet. Paths that match nothing come back in `_fields_unmatched`; a list where nothing matches at all is a 400, because an empty object would be a confident wrong answer. |
| `precision` | query | no | integer | Round every non-integer number in the response to this many decimal places. Integers are left alone, because an id is not a measurement. Ecliptic longitudes ship with fourteen decimals by default; 2 is about a tenth of an arcminute. |

## Request body

| Field | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| `date` | string | yes |  |
| `time` | string | yes |  |
| `timezoneOffset` | number | no | Hours from UTC at the given moment, not minutes. Fractional zones are hours too: 5.5 for India, 5.75 for Nepal, -3.5 for Newfoundland. Defaults to 0, meaning UTC. Ignored when timezone is sent. |
| `timezone` | string | no | IANA zone name such as Europe/Kyiv, or auto to look the zone up from latitude and longitude. The server takes the offset that zone kept at this local date and time, summer time included, and uses it in place of timezoneOffset. A clock time that happened twice takes the first occurrence; one skipped when clocks went forward takes the offset from before the change. Abbreviations such as EST are refused. Before 1970 the tz database is not reliable for every place, so send timezoneOffset when the local clock is known. |
| `latitude` | number | yes |  |
| `longitude` | number | yes |  |
| `houseSystem` | "P" \| "K" \| "R" \| "C" \| "E" \| "W" \| "B" \| "M" \| … | no |  |
| `name` | string | no |  |
| `city` | string | no |  |
| `zodiacType` | "tropical" \| "sidereal" | no |  |
| `ayanamsaId` | number | no |  |
| `ayanamsa` | "fagan-bradley" \| "lahiri" \| "de-luce" \| "raman" \| "krishnamurti" \| "kp" \| "yukteshwar" \| "jn-bhasin" \| … | no | Sidereal school by name. Lahiri when omitted. Equivalent to ayanamsaId; send either. |
| `cosmogram` | boolean | no |  |
| `category` | string | yes | One of the 19 ACG life categories. The list is at GET /v1/acg/categories. |
| `countries` | string[] | no | ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes to restrict the search to. Omit to search the whole bundled list. |
| `minPopulation` | integer | no | Floor on city population. The bundled set starts at 15000, so a lower value changes nothing. |
| `orbKm` | number | no | How far a line reaches, kilometres. Default 1126, which is the 700 miles Jim Lewis used. |
| `limit` | integer | no | How many cities to return. Default 25. |
| `minSeparationKm` | number | no | Keep returned cities at least this far apart, kilometres. Default 300. An ACG line is a curve, so without thinning the top of the ranking is the densest stretch of one line rather than a set of places. Set 0 to disable and see every city in score order. |
| `sort` | "net" \| "supportive" | no | `net` (default) ranks on supportive minus challenging. `supportive` ignores the challenging side when ordering, though it is still reported. |

```json
{
  "date": "1990-05-15",
  "time": "15:30:00",
  "timezone": "Europe/Kyiv",
  "category": "career",
  "countries": [
    "UA",
    "PL"
  ],
  "orbKm": 1126,
  "limit": 25,
  "sort": "net"
}
```

## Responses

| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 200 | Successful calculation |
| 400 | Validation error |
| 401 | Missing or invalid API key |

### Success fields, under `data`

| Field | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| `type` | string | no |  |
| `category` | object | no |  |
| `category.id` | string | no |  |
| `category.name` | string | no |  |
| `category.description` | string | no |  |
| `category.language` | string | no |  |
| `category.lines` | object[] | no |  |
| `orbKm` | number | no |  |
| `sort` | string | no |  |
| `minSeparationKm` | number | no |  |
| `suppressedAsTooClose` | number | no |  |
| `maxPossibleSupportive` | number | no |  |
| `pool` | object | no |  |
| `pool.citiesConsidered` | number | no |  |
| `pool.citiesWithAnyLine` | number | no |  |
| `pool.minPopulation` | number | no |  |
| `pool.countries` | string[] | no |  |
| `count` | number | no |  |
| `places` | object[] | no |  |
| `dataset` | object | no |  |
| `dataset.source` | string | no |  |
| `dataset.url` | string | no |  |
| `dataset.licence` | string | no |  |
| `dataset.downloaded` | string | no |  |
| `dataset.count` | number | no |  |
| `dataset.note` | string | no |  |
| `attribution` | object | no |  |
| `attribution.source` | string | no |  |
| `attribution.sourceUrl` | string | no |  |
| `attribution.licence` | string | no |  |
| `attribution.licenceUrl` | string | no |  |
| `attribution.notice` | string | no |  |

## Example

```bash
curl -X POST https://api.astroway.info/v1/acg/best-places \
  -H "X-Api-Key: aw_live_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "date": "1990-05-15", "time": "15:30:00", "timezone": "Europe/Kyiv", "category": "career", "countries": [ "UA", "PL" ], "orbKm": 1126, "limit": 25, "sort": "net" }'
```

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