Integrated Taxonomic Information System - Web Services

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Basic Web Services

The ITIS Web Services provide the ability to search and retrieve data from ITIS by providing access to the data behind the ITIS web site

Description - This lists each service function with its description, inputs, outputs, and a sample URL that returns results.

WSDL - The Web Service Description Language document that fully describes the ITIS Web Service. This document can be used to create clients that access the service.

All services described in the WSDL are available at http://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/services/ITISService/name_of_service

For example, the web service description can be accessed at http://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/services/ITISService/getDescription

Creating a Client - This provides step-by-step coding information for creating a Web Service client using the Java language.

JSON Web Services

The ITIS JSON services provide an API that matches the Web Service API. All calls for JSON data are made by substituting "jsonservice" into the Web Service call in place of the "services/ITISService" part of the URL.

For example, the ITIS web service call to get a full record by TSN looks like this:

http://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/services/ITISService/getFullRecordFromTSN?tsn=202384

The corresponding JSON service call is:

http://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/jsonservice/getFullRecordFromTSN?tsn=202384

The Web Service getDescription shown above would convert to the following JSON call:

http://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/jsonservice/getDescription

JSON-P Web Services

Besides standard JSON output, you can also get JSON data from the web service in JSON-P format. This provides the JSON data wrapped in a JavaScript function for safer cross-domain Ajax calls.

The JavaScript function name is provided by the caller at the time of the web service request, providing true flexibility for your web applications.

JSON-P calls are made are made by appending "jsonp=function_name" to the argument list for your web service call.

Continuing the above example, since the ITIS JSON service call to get a full record by TSN looks like this:

http://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/jsonservice/getFullRecordFromTSN?tsn=202384

Then the JSON-P call to return the same data as a JavaScript function named "itis_data" would be:

http://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/jsonservice/getFullRecordFromTSN?tsn=202384&jsonp=itis_data

The JSON getDescription call shown above could convert to the following JSON-P call:

http://www.itis.gov/ITISWebService/jsonservice/getDescription?jsonp=itisDescription