API Beginner Tips

1

I want to create a series of websites focusing on Life. My first experiment uses ITIS’ database. You can see an example of what I’m trying to achieve at http://gaia.geobop.com/life/ursus-maritimus/

Now I’d like to try something similar using Catalogue of Life’s database. I normally use WordPress, but I was told that Drupal is better for projets of this nature.

I tentatively want to create separate subdomains for animals, plants, fungi, each vertebrate class, insects, and microbes. I created the first one at mammalia.geobop.com and installed Drupal. Now I need to figure out how to use your API to connect to your database. I hired someone from Fiverr to do it for me, but they couldn’t figure it out. Can you give me some tips that I can share with another developer?

The structure will be very simple . . .

The primary information I need initially is scientific names, common names, rank (e.g family, order, etc.), and parent-child relationships. That will enable me to display bread-crumbs navigation links and lists of children.

Is there a simple way to do that? Or is there a good reference I can share with a developer?

Thank you.

David Blomstrom

2

@GeoBear

Our API is documented here: GBIF API Reference :: Technical Documentation (see also here the API for checklist bank which is what’s behind the Catalogue of Life website https://api.checklistbank.org).
I suggest checking these two Data Use Club recoded webinars:

1 Like
3

I was asking ChatGPT for help, but I couldn’t figure it out. Then I hired two different people from Fiverr, but neither one of them could do it either. I’ll check the webinars, though. Thanks.

4

Is there anything in particular you are struggling with? If you have a specific question it’ll be more easy to answer.

5

I want to create separate websites focusing on plants, mammals, birds, etc. I’m using WordPress. The first step is to simply display a hierarchy of pages.

On my website aves.geobop.com, for example, I have just one static page - index.php - with a parent template and a child template. The first page - class Aves - should display at mysite/V2, right? Galliformes should display at mysite/38Z, etc.

However, nothing displays at all. Below is the code in my child template. Thank you.

<?php /* Template Name: Life Section Child */ // AVES // Get the slug from the query variable $slug = get_query_var('taxonomy_slug'); // Query the Catalogue of Life API for the taxon ID using the slug $search_api_url = "https://api.checklistbank.org/name/search?q={$slug}"; $search_response = wp_remote_get($search_api_url); $search_data = json_decode(wp_remote_retrieve_body($search_response), true); // Handle errors or no results if (is_wp_error($search_response) || empty($search_data['result'])) { echo "

404 Not Found

"; echo "

The taxon '{$slug}' could not be found in the Catalogue of Life database.

"; exit; } // Get the first result's taxon ID $taxon = $search_data['result'][0]; $taxon_id = $taxon['id']; // Query the classification for this taxon ID $classification_api_url = "https://api.checklistbank.org/dataset/9910/taxon/{$taxon_id}/classification"; $class_response = wp_remote_get($classification_api_url); $class_data = json_decode(wp_remote_retrieve_body($class_response), true); // Handle errors in classification response if (is_wp_error($class_response) || empty($class_data)) { echo "

Classification Not Found

"; echo "

Unable to retrieve classification information for '{$slug}' (ID: {$taxon_id}).

"; exit; } // Display taxon verification and classification echo "

Matched Taxon: {$taxon['scientificName']}

"; echo "

Taxon ID: {$taxon_id}

"; echo "

Rank: {$taxon['rank']}

"; echo "

Status: {$taxon['status']}

"; echo "

Classification

"; echo "
    "; foreach ($class_data as $item) { echo "
  • "; echo "Name: " . $item['name'] . "
    "; echo "Rank: " . $item['rank'] . "
    "; echo "
    • "; } echo "
"; ?>