ToL Web Services
Tree of Life Page Content Services
The Tree of Life Page Content Services let you download the content for a particular Tree of Life branch or leaf page.
Downloading a ToL page is a two-step process:
- Find the unique ToL identifier for the group to which a page is attached:
- Use the ToL Group ID Service to get the NODE ID for a given taxon.
- Request the page content:
- Use the ToL Page Content Services, which returns the text for a given page.
In order to use the ToL web services, you will need a User Key. Please also see the Disclaimers and Terms of Use.
The ToL Response Format is described below. There are several page content services available based on 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
Non-commercial Use WITH Modification/Adaptation of Content
The page service url is
http://tolweb.org/webservices/pagecontent/nc/xxx
where xxx is the unique identifier for a group in the ToL database. For example, in order to download the content for the Annelida branch page, use 2486 which is the ToL identifier for the Annelida node. The ids of other named nodes may be obtained via the ToL Group ID Service.
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/webservices/pagecontent/nc-nd/xxx
where xxx is the unique identifier for a group in the ToL database. For example, in order to download the content for the Annelida branch page, use 2486 which is the ToL identifier for the Annelida node. The ids of other named nodes may be obtained via the ToL Group ID Service.
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/webservices/pagecontent/c/xxx
where xxx is the unique identifier for a group in the ToL database. For example, in order to download the content for the Annelida branch page, use 2486 which is the ToL identifier for the Annelida node. The ids of other named nodes may be obtained via the ToL Group ID Service.
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/webservices/pagecontent/c-nd/xxx
where xxx is the unique identifier for a group in the ToL database. For example, in order to download the content for the Annelida branch page, use 2486 which is the ToL identifier for the Annelida node. The ids of other named nodes may be obtained via the ToL Group ID Service.
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.
ToL Response Format
The response document is an XML document with the root element, <success>, which contains three elements:
- <pages> contains zero or more <page> elements providing the page content.
- <contributors> contains zero or more <contributor> elements providing information about the page contributors.
- <sources> contains zero or more <source> elements providing information about the source collections of text sections.
To see an example of a response document view Terrestrial Vertebrates XML. 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.
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group-description | Brief description of the group. On the ToL this is used to
provide information about the group 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 in
the names index and used to retrieve groups in group searches.
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subgroups | Information about the subgroups featured on the Tree of Life page and their relationships, if available. | ||||||||||||||||||||
treeimage |
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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.
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section-text | The text of the section in HTML format. The text includes inline links to thumbnails for images and other media embedded in text sections, and these thumbnails serve as anchors for links to ToL media pages which provide the original media file (i.e., the full-sized image, video, audio file) along with the media data. Note that http requests to thumbnails will work only from approved ToL partner domains. For use on other domains, you can get the thumbnails via the Tree of Life Media Services. References to media files are surrounded by <!-- ToL Media #START# -->...<!-- ToL Media #END# --> tags. Information about all media files associated with a given text section is also provided separately in the section-media element. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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. Not yet implemented | ||||||||||||||||||||
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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Future Plans
The following features will be added to these services as soon as possible:
- Download content added after a given date
- This will let the user limit the download to new content that has been added to the ToL database after a given date.
- Download content for an entire branch
- Rather than requesting content one page at a time, you will be able to ask for all the pages attached to a given branch of the tree, e.g., all cephalopod pages, in in one file.
If you have suggestions or feature requests, please contact