EntrezAJAX

An AJAX endpoint for NCBI's Entrez service

EntrezAJAX provides an interface which returns JSON data from the NCBI Entrez service which can be accessed by a web browser directly. The interface can circumvent web browsers' same origin policies by supporting JSONP. A manuscript describing the service has been published in Source Code for Biology and Medicine. You can also read the initial announcement.

What can it be used for?

The possibilities are unlimited, but to whet your appetite:

• publication lists on your group website
• correct spelling in user-submitted data
• find related articles
• search and fetch protein sequences

How do I use it?

If you are developing a website that needs access to NCBI Entrez via AJAX then please register for an API key and then read the API documentation. There is also a FAQ.

How does it work?

If you are interested in deploying a similar service or are just curious how it works, please read the implementation details.

News/updates

16th February 2010

• Document retrieval limit increased to 32Mb
• Added experimental HMMER support

8th Februrary 2010

• Fixed broken DTD

15th September 2010

• Inspired by Google Instant, Jonathan Bouman has developed PMinstant using the EntrezAJAX API. Nice work, Jonathan!

21st June 2010

• Manuscript published in Source Code for Biology and Medicine
• Added a FAQ
• Added the search and fetch protein sequences example
• JSON results are now a dictionary with two keys: result and entrezajax, the latter contains error information
• Gave a friendlier error when the 2Mb GAE limit is hit

Old versions

r1 (initial release)

Citation

If you use EntrezAJAX in your work I would be very grateful if you cite the following manuscript:

Loman, N. and M. Pallen (2010). EntrezAJAX: direct web browser access to the Entrez Programming Utilities. Source Code for Biology and Medicine 5(1): 6.

Contact

Contact Nick Loman for more information.