Instantiating a Client for a Custom BioThings API

The Quick Start tutorial shows how to get clients for all publicly available BioThings APIs. What if you create your own custom BioThings API?

With biothings_client, you can generate client settings for any future APIs created with BioThings API SDK. The BioThings API Single source tutorial explains how to set up a simple BioThings API from PharmGKB gene data. The following code snippet shows an example of how to setup biothings_client to access that custom API:

In [1]: from biothings_client import get_client

In [2]: pharmgkb_client = get_client(url='http://35.164.95.182:8000/v1')    # 'gene' entity type can be inferred from the API endpoint address

In [3]: pharmgkb_client = get_client('gene', url='http://35.164.95.182:8000/v1')    # alternatively, explicitly specify 'gene' or other value as the entity type

In [4]: pharmgkb_client.query('ncbi_gene_id:1017', fields='pharmgkb_accession_id')
Out[4]:
{'hits': [{'_id': 'cOydWmcBViFqgJfo4gdM',
   '_score': 7.495912,
   'pharmgkb_accession_id': 'PA101'}],
 'max_score': 7.495912,
 'took': 10,
 'total': 1}

The url parameter to get_client specifies where the BioThings API endpoint is located (the address above is temporary and is no longer serviced by us). The entity type parameter is ‘gene’ (as the entity type of PharmGKB gene is gene), which can be inferred from the API endpoint address. If the API endpoint address does not contain the entity type, you can explicitly specify it as a parameter to get_client.