FPbase REST API

FPbase supports a REST API to search and retrieve protein attributes in JSON or CSV format. This is still a work in development and is subject to change. This page details how to use the current API.

Basics

A simple way to learn about the API is to build a search using the advanced search query builder, and look at the resulting parameters in the URL. Any URL generated with the query builder can be directly used in the API, simply be replacing /search/ in the URL with /api/proteins/. For instance, a query built on the advanced search builder with the following filters:

Name contains green
Quantum Yield is greater than or equal to 0.7

would generate the following url:
https://www.fpbase.org/search/?name__icontains=green&default_state__qy__gte=0.7

By replacing /search/ in the URL with /api/proteins/:
https://www.fpbase.org/api/proteins/?name__icontains=green&default_state__qy__gte=0.7

you will now be searching using the protein api. To retrieve the results in JSON or CSV format, add &format=json (or format=csv) to the URL:
https://www.fpbase.org/api/proteins/?name__icontains=green&default_state__qy__gte=0.7&format=json

Entry points

/api/proteins/
Main protein list api
/api/proteins/basic/
Dedicated api for 'basic' (non-switchable) proteins that delivers a flat dictionary of attributes (default state is assumed)
/api/proteins/spectra/
Retrieve protein spectra

Searchable Fields

The following field name and lookups can be used. Fieldnames and lookups must be separated by a double-underscore "__". For example: name__icontains. See below for an explanation of each lookup operator.

field available lookups
name icontains, iendswith, istartswith, iexact,
seq icontains, iendswith, istartswith, cdna_contains
default_state__ex_max around, range, lte, gte, exact
default_state__em_max around, range, lte, gte, exact
default_state__lifetime gte, lte, range, exact
default_state__maturation gte, lte, range, exact
default_state__ext_coeff gte, lte, range, exact
default_state__qy gte, lte, range, exact
default_state__brightness gte, lte, range, exact
default_state__pka gte, lte, range, exact
default_state__bleach_measurements__rate gte, lte, range, exact
agg exact
genbank iexact
pdb contains
uniprot iexact
status exact
switch_type exact, ne
parent_organism exact
primary_reference__year gte, gt, lt, lte, range, exact
spectral_brightness gt, lt

default_state__ ?

You will notice that many of the fields describing fluorescence attributes (ex/em max, qy, ext_coeff) must be preceeded by default_state__. This is because some proteins can have multiple states. Currently, the API only searches the default state for a given protein (but it still must be specified in the query).

Lookup Operators
Here is a description for each of the lookup operators listed in the previous table.

lt is less than
gt is greater than
lte is less than or equal to
gte is greater than or equal to
around is around
exact is (case sensitive)
ne is not
iexact is (case insensitive)
range is between (specified as two comma-separated values)
contains contains (case sensitive)
icontains contains (case insensitive)
iendswith ends with (case insensitive)
istartswith starts with (case insensitive)
cdna_contains search yields proteins whose amino acid sequence contains the translated version of this DNA sequence