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:
- Non-commercial use WITH modification/adaptation of content
- Non-commercial use WITHOUT modification/adaptation of content
- Commercial use WITH modification/adaptation of content
- Commercial use WITHOUT modification/adaptation of cotent
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:
- Public Domain (no restrictions on use or redistribution)
- Creative Commons Attribution (or a previous version of this license)
- Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (or a previous version of this license)
- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (or a previous version of this license)
- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (or a previous version of this license)
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:
- Public Domain (no restrictions on use or redistribution)
- Creative Commons Attribution (or a previous version of this license)
- Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (or a previous version of this license)
- Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs (or a previous version of this license)
- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (or a previous version of this license)
- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (or a previous version of this license)
- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (or a previous version of this license)
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:
- Public Domain (no restrictions on use or redistribution)
- Creative Commons Attribution (or a previous version of this license)
- Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (or a previous version of this license)
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:
- Public Domain (no restrictions on use or redistribution)
- Creative Commons Attribution (or a previous version of this license)
- Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (or a previous version of this license)
- Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs (or a previous version of this license)
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:
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:
- Use limit to restrict the number of pages in your download. A value of 0 (the default) outputs all available pages attached to a given branch of the tree. For example, if you ask for a download of Bembidion with limit 0, you will get the page for the genus Bembidion, all the Bembidion subgenera, and all the Bembidion species (if release of this material is compatible with your use type). A limit value of 1 will give you only the single page attached to the node specified in your request.
- Use changedate to restrict your download to pages/sections that have changed after a given date....Andy: specify format for this.
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 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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pages | Element nesting information about pages | ||||||||||||||||||||
page | Element nesting information about a given page
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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.
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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. |
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group-comment | A brief comment about the group. These are usually comments
about group composition or status. |
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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.
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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.
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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. |
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treeimage | The url of the tree image used on the Tree of Life web site
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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. |
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sections | Element nesting information about individual text sections. | ||||||||||||||||||||
section | Information about an individual text section.
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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.
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media-caption | The caption for the media-set in HTML format. | ||||||||||||||||||||
section-source | Information about the source of the text.
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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
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sources | Element nesting information about the source collections of text. | ||||||||||||||||||||
source | Information about individual source collections
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Terms of Use
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.