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. 2018 Dec 13;14(12):e1006542.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006542. eCollection 2018 Dec.

Eleven quick tips to build a usable REST API for life sciences

Aleksandra Tarkowska  1 , Denise Carvalho-Silva  1   2 , Charles E Cook  1 , Edd Turner  1 , Robert D Finn  1 , Andrew D Yates  1
Affiliations

Eleven quick tips to build a usable REST API for life sciences

Aleksandra Tarkowska et al. PLoS Comput Biol. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. A command line example of the proteins API.
A Unix command line using the cURL tool to request information about proteins from the Proteins API in JSON format for human. API, application programming interface; JSON, JavaScript Object Notation.
Fig 2
Fig 2. An example of search against HMMER REST API.
(A) Search is initialised by POSTing a JSON document with a protein sequence encoded in FASTA format. The client receives a UUID in response. (B) This is used in the second and third queries to retrieve results using GET. (C) The ticket is removed using DELETE. API, application programming interface; JSON, JavaScript Object Notation; REST, representational state transfer; UUID, universally unique identifier.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Methods of encoding links into a REST API response.
(A) An example query to the Ontology Lookup Service for all available ontologies. The response lists links to access the first, previous, next, and last pages (including supplementary metadata) of the entire collection. (B) An example query to the Proteins REST API to retrieve all sequences in FASTA format. Links are encoded in the Link HTTP response header to be parsed by a client. API, application programming interface; HTTP, hypertext transfer protocol; REST, representational state transfer.
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References

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