# List blog categories `GET /api/v1/blog-categories` The store's blog categories: the navigation labels posts are filed under. This is what makes the category id inlined on every post dereferenceable, which is the reason a bare category_id scalar was refused on the post resource. NO VISIBILITY GATE, unlike /blog-posts. A draft post is unreleased editorial; a category is a label with no draft state and no status column, so there is nothing here to withhold from a key that can already page the posts naming it inline. THE INLINE REFERENCE ON A POST IS DELIBERATELY NARROWER and stays that way: it carries id, slug and name, and the rest of the category lives here. Publishing the whole category in both places would freeze two representations of one relationship, and neither could then be withdrawn. sort_order IS NOT THE PAGING ORDER. This list pages on (created_at, id), because sort_order and name are both rewritten by PATCH /blog-categories/{blogCategoryId} and a walk over either drops or repeats a row when an edit crosses a page boundary mid-sync. Sort on sort_order client-side. THERE IS NO post_count AND NO posts ARRAY. A category with 2,000 posts would serialise 2,000 ids into one row of a list, and a count would mean published posts under read_blogs and every post under write_blogs, so one field would mean two things. Page GET /api/v1/blog-posts instead; every post names its category. ## Query parameters - `limit` (integer) — Rows per page. Out of range is a 400 rather than a silent clamp, so a client asking for more than 100 learns it did not get it. - `after` (string) — The next_cursor from the previous page. Opaque: decode nothing from it and construct nothing by hand, since its encoding is not part of this contract. Omit it to read the first page. ## Responses - `200` — Success - `400` — The request was refused before any state changed. `code` is one of: `invalid_body`, a write body this route will not take. `reason` partitions it and `field` names the key when one key is at fault. `invalid_query`, a query parameter, including limit and after. `invalid_text`, a NUL byte or bytes that are not valid UTF-8 anywhere in the path, the query or the body. Strip control characters before sending. `idempotency_key_required`, a write sent without the Idempotency-Key header. `invalid_request`, an Idempotency-Key longer than 255 bytes. Routes add their own codes for rules only they know. Switch with a default arm. - `401` — No credential, or one this API does not accept. `code` is always `unauthorized`. THE BODY IS DELIBERATELY UNINFORMATIVE. An expired key, a revoked key, a publishable key, a key belonging to another merchant and a key that never existed are all refused with the same bytes, so this response cannot be used to probe which keys exist. Check the key's state in the dashboard rather than inferring it here. Send the key as `Authorization: Bearer ` or as `X-API-Key: `. It is never accepted in a query string. - `403` — The key lacks the read_blogs scope. `code` is `insufficient_scope` and the message names the scope to ask the merchant for. - `429` — Too many requests. `code` is `rate_limited`. Two limits apply independently: one on the credential and the route family, one on the client address. The headers describe whichever has less left, so honouring Retry-After always clears the window that bound. - `default` — Any status this operation does not list, in the same envelope. A 5xx means the request may or may not have applied. Retry it with the SAME Idempotency-Key: that is the only way to find out without risking a duplicate, and it is what the key is for. A few 4xx conditions arrive here rather than as a listed status because they depend on the merchant's plan or on a module being wired: 402 when a quota or a plan limit is reached, and 503 when a capability the route needs is not configured on this deployment. Both carry a `code` naming which. ## Example ```bash curl --request GET \ --url 'https://api.mercemur.com/api/v1/blog-categories' \ --header 'Authorization: Bearer ' ```