[Bioperl-l] EUtilities term handling
bix at sendu.me.uk
Thu Oct 5 11:02:01 EDT 2006
Chris Fields wrote:
> On Oct 5, 2006, at 9:08 AM, Sendu Bala wrote:
>> On the contrary, I find it a surprise because EUtilities is an interface
>> to NCBI's eutils, not the entrez website.
> It uses NCBI's CGI interface for eutils, not the SOAP interface. Very
> different. I have considered using the NCBI SOAP-based interface, but
> the web services are still somewhat incomplete, unlike the CGI interface.
I don't know anything about the SOAP interface. I'm talking about the
CGI interface that you use.
>> If I had previously read instructions on using eutils:
>> I might (do) expect that I /should/ use + in my term.
> You are looking at part of the naked URL on that page. Here's what that
> page says:
I know what it says...
> * Correct: &term=biomol+mrna[properties]+AND+mouse[organism]
The correct query is the one that has +s in it.
> I use URI for building the URL with the parameters. URI specifically
> encodes all of this for you, so spaces convert to '+' and '+' converts
> to %2B.
Well, yes. This causes what I thought of as a bug. It prevents me from
submitting a /correct/ eutils term. However it isn't a bug if you
explain to users they shouldn't be submitting valid eutils terms, but
only valid /entrez/ terms.
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