fred_request
Access FRED economic data by calling API endpoints directly to retrieve financial datasets and observations for research.
Instructions
Call any FRED API v1 endpoint path directly.
Input Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| endpoint | Yes | ||
| params_json | No | {} |
Output Schema
TableJSON Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
No arguments | |||
Implementation Reference
- fred_mcp/tools.py:30-35 (handler)The fred_request tool handler function. It takes an endpoint string and optional JSON params, parses the params, and delegates to _fred_get to make the FRED API v1 call. Decorated with @mcp.tool() for MCP registration and @_tool_error_boundary for error handling.
@mcp.tool() @_tool_error_boundary async def fred_request(endpoint: str, params_json: str = "{}") -> dict[str, Any]: """Call any FRED API v1 endpoint path directly.""" params = _parse_json_object(params_json) return await _fred_get(endpoint, params) - fred_mcp/client.py:240-241 (helper)The _fred_get helper function that makes the actual HTTP call to the FRED API v1 base URL. Called by the fred_request handler.
async def _fred_get(endpoint: str, params: dict[str, Any]) -> dict[str, Any]: return await _http_get_json(FRED_API_BASE, endpoint, params) - fred_mcp/client.py:64-71 (helper)The _parse_json_object helper function that parses the params_json string argument into a dictionary. Validates that the JSON is an object.
def _parse_json_object(raw: str) -> dict[str, Any]: try: parsed = json.loads(raw) except json.JSONDecodeError as exc: raise ValueError(f"Invalid JSON: {exc}") from exc if not isinstance(parsed, dict): raise ValueError("JSON value must be an object") return parsed - fred_mcp/app.py:1-8 (registration)Creates the FastMCP instance named 'fred-mcp' which is imported and used via @mcp.tool() decorator to register tools like fred_request.
from mcp.server.fastmcp import FastMCP mcp = FastMCP( "fred-mcp", instructions=( "Query FRED API v1, GeoFRED maps API, and FRED API v2 release observations." ), ) - fred_mcp/errors.py:41-67 (helper)The _tool_error_boundary decorator that wraps the fred_request handler to catch exceptions (FredServerError, ValueError, etc.) and convert them to error payload dictionaries for graceful error handling.
def _tool_error_boundary( func: Callable[..., Awaitable[dict[str, Any]]], ) -> Callable[..., Awaitable[dict[str, Any]]]: @wraps(func) async def wrapper(*args: Any, **kwargs: Any) -> dict[str, Any]: try: return await func(*args, **kwargs) except asyncio.CancelledError: raise except FredServerError as exc: return exc.payload except ValueError as exc: return _error_payload( str(exc), code="validation_error", error_type="validation_error", ) except Exception as exc: logger.exception("Unhandled tool error in '%s'", func.__name__) return _error_payload( "Internal server error", code="internal_error", error_type="internal_error", details={"exception_type": type(exc).__name__}, ) return wrapper