go to the Tree of Life home page

ToL Web Services

Tree of Life Page Content Services

There are several page content services available based on the data recipient and the intended use of the data:

The ToL Response Format is described below. Before using ToL web services, please see the Disclaimers and Terms of Use.

Non-commercial Use WITH Modification/Adaptation of Content

The page service url is

http://tolweb.org/...&node_id=yyy

where yyy is the unique identifier for a group in the ToL database (see Parameters).

Materials provided through this service are subject to one of the following licenses:

The specific license for each text section is specified in the response document.

Non-commercial Use WITHOUT Modification/Adaptation of Content

The page service url is

http://tolweb.org/...&node_id=yyy

where yyy is the unique identifier for a group in the ToL database (see Parameters).

Materials provided through this service are subject to one of the following licenses:

The specific license for each text section is specified in the response document.

Commercial Use WITH Modification/Adaptation of Content

The page service url is

http://tolweb.org/...&node_id=yyy

where yyy is the unique identifier for a group in the ToL database (see Parameters).

Materials provided through this service are subject to one of the following licenses:

The specific license for each text section is specified in the response document.

Commercial Use WITHOUT Modification/Adaptation of Content

The page service url is

http://tolweb.org/...&node_id=yyy

where yyy is the unique identifier for a group in the ToL database (see Parameters).

Materials provided through this service are subject to one of the following licenses:

The specific license for each text section is specified in the response document.

Parameters

If you want to download all available content for all pages attached to a given group and its descendents, you only need a single numeric parameter, node_id, which is the unique identifier for a group in the ToL database. In order to download all available content for the entire tree use node_id=1, which is the node id for Life on Earth. The ids of other named nodes may be obtained via the ToL Group ID Service. If a named node has a ToL branch or leaf page attached to it, you can also get its id from the page url. In ToL page urls, the node id will usually be appended at then end, separated by a slash from the group name. For example, the url for the Bembidion page is:

http://tolweb.org/Bembidion/194

and the id for the Bembidion node is 194.

There are two other parameters which you can use to limit the data in your download:

ToL Response Format

The response document is an XML document with the root element, <success>, which contains three elements: <pages>, <contributors>, and <sources>. The <pages> element contains zero or more <page> elements providing the page content, the <contributors> element contains zero or more <contributor> elements providing information about the page contributors, and the <sources> element contains zero or more <source> elements providing information about the source collections of text sections. Below is a summary of the elements and attributes that are included in the XML file.

Element Description/Attributes
pages Element nesting information about pages
page Element nesting information about a given page
id The unique identifier for the page in the Tree of Life Web Project
page-url The url of the page on the Tree of Life web site.
page-status The review status of the page (see Status of Tree of Life Pages):
  • skeletal
  • complete
  • under construction
  • tol reviewed
  • peer reviewed
date-created The date when the page first went online.
date-changed The date when the page was last changed.
Note that there is both a date-changed attribute in the <page> element and a content-changed attribute in the <section> element. For the time being, the values for these will be the same, because we do not yet keep track of sections separately. However, we are planning on doing so in the future.
group Information about the group to which the page is attached.
Although the information in the group attributes is duplicated in the Tree Structure Service, we may still want to include it here for people who don't want to bother with the tree structure.
node-id The unique identifier for the node in the Tree of Life Web Project to which the page is attached. (links to tree structure web service)
extinct Indicates whether the group is extinct.
  • true
  • false
confidence Confidence of placement of the group in the tree structure of the parent group:
  • confident
  • incertae sedis in putative position
  • incertae sedis position unspecified
phylesis Indicates whether the group is monophyletic.
  • monophyletic
  • monophyly uncertain
  • not monophyletic
leaf Indicates whether the group represents a leaf in the Tree of Life (may be applied to species, subspecies, populations, strains)
  • true
  • false
group-description Brief description of the group. On the ToL this is used in the tree or taxon list of the page of the containing group.
group-comment A brief comment about the group. These are usually comments about group composition or status.
names Element nesting taxon names for a given group.
name The official ToL name for the taxon, which is used for the title of branch and leaf pages, usually the scientific name of the organisms. For monotypic genera, families, etc., the most specific name.
italicize-name Indicates whether the group name should be italicized when printed.
  • true
  • false
authority Authors for a given name.
auth-date Publication date of the name.
name-comment Additional comments about the name
new-combination Indicates whether the name is a new combination. If so, authority data is put in parentheses.
  • true
  • false
combination-author Authors of a new combination.
combination-date Publication date of the new combination
othernames Element nesting other names that are applied to the group.
othername Another name for the entire group, e. g., synonyms, English names, names in other languages, names indicating different taxonomic ranks. Some of these names are printed on Tree of Life pages as subtitles or supertitles, others are just stored and used to retrieve groups in group searches.
id The unique identifier for the name in the Tree of Life Web Project
italicize-name Indicates whether the group name should be italicized when printed.
  • true
  • false
authority Authors for a given name.
auth-date Publication date of the name.
name-comment Additional comments about the name
is-important Indicates whether the name is considered an important name. Important names are printed in the subtitle of Tree of Life pages.
  • true
  • false
is-preferred Indicates whether the name is a preferred label. If so, it is printed as a supertitle on Tree of Life pages. Preferred labels are used most often for higher rank names in the case of monotypic taxa.
  • true
  • false
sequence Position of the name in the other names sequence. Determines the sequence in which names are printed on ToL pages.
subgroups Information about the subgroups featured on the Tree of Life page.
I'm not sure what the best way would be to provide this information, or if we need to provide it at all since it can also be derived from the tree structure service. I think it may be good to include it in the page service because the Discussion of Phylogenetic Relationships will often be closely tied to the tree/taxon list, and some users may want to harvest the tree image or recreate the list of subgroups.
treeimage The url of the tree image used on the Tree of Life web site
license License under which the tree image is distributed
newicktree The structure of the tree in newick format. Could add other formats that people may want to use.
taxonlist An indented list of the subgroups in HTML format
treecomment A comment about the tree/list of subgroups. This usually contains references for the tree structure and related information.
sections Element nesting information about individual text sections.
section Information about an individual text section.
id The unique identifier for the section in the Tree of Life Web Project
section-title The title of the text section on the Tree of Life page.
page-order The position of the text section in the section sequence of the Tree of Life page.
copyright-date The copyright date of the text section.
license License under which the text of the section is distributed:
  • public domain
  • cc-by 1.0
  • cc-by-nc 1.0
  • cc-by-sa 1.0
  • cc-by-nd 1.0
  • cc-by-nc-sa 1.0
  • cc-by-nc-nd 1.0
  • cc-by 2.0
  • cc-by-nc 2.0
  • cc-by-sa 2.0
  • cc-by-nd 2.0
  • cc-by-nc-sa 2.0
  • cc-by-nc-nd 2.0
  • cc-by 2.5
  • cc-by-nc 2.5
  • cc-by-sa 2.5
  • cc-by-nd 2.5
  • cc-by-nc-sa 2.5
  • cc-by-nc-nd 2.5
  • cc-by 3.0
  • cc-by-nc 3.0
  • cc-by-sa 3.0
  • cc-by-nd 3.0
  • cc-by-nc-sa 3.0
  • cc-by-nc-nd 3.0
  • all rights reserved
authors The ids of the section authors, in sequence, separated by commas. Relevant data are provided in the contributors element
correspondents The ids of the section correspondents (people who should be contacted with questions about the content), in sequence, separated by commas. Relevant data are provided in the contributors element
copyright-owners The ids of the copyright owners of the section text, in sequence, separated by commas. Relevant data are provided in the contributors element
other-copyright Copyright of the section text, if the copyright is not owned by Tree of Life contributors. This is used, for example if a publisher or an employer owns the copyright.
content-changed The date when the content of the section was last changed.
section-text The text of the section in HTML format. Images and other media featured in text sections are provided separately in the section-media element. The original place of a media file in the text is indicated by an HTML comment of the format: <!--media_id="xxx"-->, where xxx is the unique identifier for the media file in the Tree of Life Web Project.
section-media Element nesting information about media files associated with a given text section.
media-set Information about a media set. A media set consists of one or more media files and an accompanying caption.
id The unique identifiers for the media files in the Tree of Life Web Project. The sequence of the ids follows the sequence in which the files should be displayed. Using these ids, the media files can be retrieved from the Tree of Life Media Service. If the master file is not available for distribution due to license resctrictions, a thumbnail or link-image will be provided instead, which can be linked to the image/movie/sound/document data page on the Tree of Life web site.
type The media type:
  • Image
  • Sound
  • Movie
  • Document
placement Information about the desired placement of the media file:
  • anyplace - It is not important that the media file and its caption be displayed exactly in its orginal position. It can be displayed separately, out of its original context.
  • inplace - The media file should be displayed in its original place in the text section. This usually applies to small inline icons, which do not usually have captions.
media-caption The caption for the media-set in HTML format.
section-source Information about the source of the text.
source-collection The unique Tree of Life identifier for the source collection. Data are provided in the sources element.
source-title The title of the source text.
source-url The url of the source text.
more-source Additional information about the source text.
references The references for the page, in plain text, individual references separated by hard returns.
internet-info The internet links for the page, in HTML format, usually in an unordered list.
contributors Element nesting information about contributors
contributor Information about individual contributors
id The unique identifier for the contributor in the Tree of Life Web Project
last-name The contributor's last name
first-name The contributor's first name
email The contributor's email address.
homepage The url of the contributor's home page.
tol-profile The url of the contributor's Tree of Life profile page.
portrait The url where a portrait of the contributor can be downloaded.
institution The contributors institution.
address The contributors mailing address
sources Element nesting information about the source collections of text.
source Information about individual source collections
id The unique identifier for the source collection in the Tree of Life Web Project.
name The name of the source collection.
url The url of the source collection home page.
logo The url where the logo of the collection can be downloaded.

Creative Commons Icon Most of the materials distributed throught this web service are in the public domain or licensed under a Creative Commons License. .... When text is displayed on other web sites, links back to the original page should be provided. The relevant url is availble in the source-url attribute of the <section-source> element. For additional information about the terms and conditions of use of ToL materials, please refer to the page about Tree of Life Copyright Policies.

Tree of Life Features

top