Phonetic Matching — compare words by sound

Phonetic Text Search API

Hosted on ApyHub

What it does

Phonetic Matching compares a reference word against a list of candidate strings and returns the ones that sound alike. Send a source, a candidates array, and optionally choose algorithm as metaphone or soundex.

Use metaphone for Double Metaphone primary-code matching, or soundex for the standard Soundex algorithm. The response returns a data array of matches, with each item including the shared phonetic code and the matching match string.

This is useful when exact spelling is unreliable: deduplicating names, finding likely alternatives in search, or normalizing user-entered records where typos and transliterations are common. If you need to compare a single word against a curated candidate list and keep only the phonetically similar results, Phonetic Matching gives you a compact output you can filter directly.

Quickstart

Match a source word against a list of candidate spellings using the default phonetic algorithm.

curl -X POST "http://localhost:8080/apyhub/phonetic-match" \
  -H "apy-token: $APY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"source":"smith","candidates":["smyth","smithe","jones","schmidt"]}'

What you'll get back

Returns a JSON object with a data array. Each item in the array is an object with code and match fields, where code is the phonetic code shared by the source word and the matching candidate.

{
  "data": [
    {
      "code": "SM0",
      "match": "smyth"
    },
    {
      "code": "SM0",
      "match": "smithe"
    }
  ]
}

About this endpoint

What it does

Matches a source word against a list of candidate words using a phonetic algorithm. It returns the candidates that share a phonetic code with the source, along with that shared code.

Request Body

Parameter	Type	Mandatory	Description
source	String	Yes	The reference word to match against.
algorithm	ENUM	No	Phonetic algorithm to use: `metaphone` (default) or `soundex`.
candidates	String Array	Yes	List of candidate words to compare against the source.

Response

Returns a JSON object with a data array field. Each item in the array is an object containing a code string and a match string. The code value is the phonetic code shared by the source and the matching candidate.

Parameter	Type	Mandatory	Description
data	Object Array	No	Array of matched results. Each item contains:<br>- `code`: the phonetic code shared by source and this candidate<br>- `match`: the matching candidate word

Body

Name

Type

Description

bodyREQUIRED

object

—

Quickstart

What you'll get back

About this endpoint

What it does

Request Body

Response

Body

Errors any endpoint can return