NCBI Resource Locator

Via the public-semweb-lifesci mailing list:


"The NCBI Resource Locator provides stable, uniform addressing for NCBI content, making it easy to link to individual records. Some NCBI resources also provide services (like search) through these URLs."

http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/



How does it work?
Each URL has the form

http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/<noun>/<verb>/<expression>

Where:

• <noun> is an NCBI resource (e.g., pubmed, gene, nucleotide, etc.)


• <verb> is the action to perform (e.g., search, get,etc.). If <verb> is missing, the default verb "get" is used.


• <expression> is data used by the action to perform the request

Some examples:

• http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12345
  Show the PubMed record with pmid 12345


• http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/search/cancer
  Search PubMed for "cancer"


• http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/search/human+p53
  Search PubMed for "human p53"
  


• http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/homologene/search/dystrophin
  Search Homologene for "dystrophin"
  

Note: but I guess this kind of REST URL doesn't allow to specify the output format (XML, ASN1, etc...)