API Clients

API clients handle the underlying details of how network requests are made and how responses are decoded. We are using Core API which is a format-independent Document Object Model for representing Web APIs. It is recommended to use the Core API clients described below for a more robust and intuitive way to interact with the UniBind API rather than constructing HTTP requests and decoding responses.

Currently, Core API provides three clients:

As a way of getting started, you can interact with the UniBind API using the sample calls provided below.

Command line client

# Install the command line client
$ pip install coreapi-cli
To interact with the API: 
# Load the schema document
$ coreapi get https://unibind.uio.no/api/v1/docs

# Interact with the API endpoint
$ coreapi action datasets list -p page=... -p page_size=... -p search=... -p order=... -p biological_condition=... -p cell_line=... -p collection=... -p data_source=... -p has_pvalue=... -p identifier=... -p jaspar_id=... -p model=... -p species=... -p summary=... -p tf_name=... -p threshold_pvalue=...

# For example
coreapi action datasets list -p collection=Robust -p species=Homo\ sapiens -p tf_name=SMAD3

Python client

# Install the Python client library
$ pip install coreapi
To interact with the API: 
import coreapi

# Initialize a client & load the schema document
client = coreapi.Client()
schema = client.get("https://unibind.uio.no/api/v1/docs")

# Interact with the API endpoint
action = ["datasets", "list"]
params = {
    "page": ...,
    "page_size": ...,
    "search": ...,
    "order": ...,
    "biological_condition": ...,
    "cell_line": ...,
    "collection": ...,
    "data_source": ...,
    "has_pvalue": ...,
    "identifier": ...,
    "jaspar_id": ...,
    "model": ...,
    "species": ...,
    "summary": ...,
    "tf_name": ...,
    "threshold_pvalue": ...,
}
result = client.action(schema, action, params=params)

# For example
params = {
    "collection": 'Robust',
    "tf_name": 'SMAD3',
    "species": 'Homo sapiens',
}
result = client.action(schema, action, params=params)

JavaScript client

<!-- Load the JavaScript client library -->
<script src="https://unibind.uio.no/static/rest_framework/js/coreapi-0.1.1.js"></script>
<script src="https://unibind.uio.no/api/v1/docs/schema.js"></script>
To interact with the API: 
var coreapi = window.coreapi  // Loaded by `coreapi.js`
var schema = window.schema    // Loaded by `schema.js`

// Initialize a client
var client = new coreapi.Client()

// Interact with the API endpoint
var action = ["datasets", "list"]
var params = {
    page: ...,
    page_size: ...,
    search: ...,
    order: ...,
    biological_condition: ...,
    cell_line: ...,
    collection: ...,
    data_source: ...,
    has_pvalue: ...,
    identifier: ...,
    jaspar_id: ...,
    model: ...,
    species: ...,
    summary: ...,
    tf_name: ...,
    threshold_pvalue: ...,
}
client.action(schema, action, params).then(function(result) {
    // Return value is in 'result'
})

Sample calls

These are sample calls to API from different languages. You can create the query url by using our Live API

$.ajax({
    url: 'https://unibind.uio.no/api/v1/datasets?format=jsonp',
    dataType: 'jsonp',
    jsonp: false,
    jsonpCallback: 'callback',
    success: function(data){
        //Use data and do something
    },
});

import requests, sys
 
query_url = "https://unibind.uio.no/api/v1/datasets?format=json"
 
result = requests.get(query_url)
 
if not result.ok:
  r.raise_for_status()
  sys.exit()
 
decoded = result.json()
print(repr(decoded))

use strict;
use warnings;
 
use HTTP::Tiny;
 
my $http = HTTP::Tiny->new();
 
my $server = 'https://unibind.uio.no/api/v1/';
my $ext = 'datasets?format=json';
my $response = $http->get($server.$ext, {
  headers => { 'Content-type' => 'application/json' }
});
 
die "Failed!\n" unless $response->{success};
 
 
use JSON;
use Data::Dumper;
if(length $response->{content}) {
  my $hash = decode_json($response->{content});
  local $Data::Dumper::Terse = 1;
  local $Data::Dumper::Indent = 1;
  print Dumper $hash;
  print "\n";
}

require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
 
server='https://unibind.uio.no/api/v1/'
path = 'datasets?format=json'
 
url = URI.parse(server)
http = Net::HTTP.new(url.host, url.port)
 
request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(path, {'Content-Type' => 'application/json'})
 
response = http.request(request)
 
if response.code != "200"
  puts "Invalid response: #{response.code}"
  puts response.body
  exit
end
 
require 'rubygems'
require 'json'
require 'yaml'
 
result = JSON.parse(response.body)
puts YAML::dump(result)

library(jsonlite)
url <- "https://unibind.uio.no/api/v1/datasets?format=json"

result <- fromJSON(url)
#create a dataframe
df <- result$results

import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.Reader;
 
public class UniBindRest {
 
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    String server = "https://unibind.uio.no/api/v1/";
    String ext = "datasets?format=json";
    URL url = new URL(server + ext);
 
    URLConnection connection = url.openConnection();
    HttpURLConnection httpConnection = (HttpURLConnection)connection;
    
    httpConnection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/json");
    
    InputStream response = connection.getInputStream();
    int responseCode = httpConnection.getResponseCode();
 
    if(responseCode != 200) {
      throw new RuntimeException("Response code was not 200. Detected response was "+responseCode);
    }
 
    String output;
    Reader reader = null;
    try {
      reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(response, "UTF-8"));
      StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
      char[] buffer = new char[8192];
      int read;
      while ((read = reader.read(buffer, 0, buffer.length)) > 0) {
        builder.append(buffer, 0, read);
      }
      output = builder.toString();
    } 
    finally {
        if (reader != null) try {
          reader.close(); 
        } catch (IOException logOrIgnore) {
          logOrIgnore.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    System.out.println(output);
  }
}

curl 'https://unibind.uio.no/api/v1/datasets?format=json' -H 'Content-type:application/json'