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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:

  1. Find the unique ToL identifier for the group to which a page is attached:
  2. Request the page content:

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

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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
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
  • Under Construction
  • Complete
  • ToL Reviewed
  • Peer Reviewed
date-created The date when the page first went online.
date-changed The date when the page was last changed.
group Information about the group to which the page is attached.
node-id The unique identifier for the node in the Tree of Life Web Project to which the page is attached.
extinct Indicates whether the group is extinct.
  • true
  • false
confidence Confidence of placement of the group in the tree structure:
  • 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 to provide information about the group 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 in the names index 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 and their relationships, if available.
treeimage
treeimage-url The url of the tree image used on the Tree of Life web site
license License under which the tree image is distributed (cc-by 3.0)
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:
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. 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.
id The unique identifier for the media file in the Tree of Life Web Project. Thumbnails or original 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.
type The media type:
  • Image
  • Sound
  • Movie
  • Document
thumbnail The url where the thumnail can be downloaded.
media-file The url where the original media file can be downloaded.
media-caption The caption for the media-set in HTML format. Not yet implemented
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.

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

Tree of Life Features

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