[API-users] GBIF taxon page URLs by scientific name?

[Markus Döring]

Hi Yde,

the right way to retrieve records in checklist bank for a given taxonID as published by the source from some checklist is the following:

http://api.gbif.org/v1/species?datasetKey=90d9e8a6-0ce1-472d-b682-3451095dbc5a&sourceId=409106

The numerical GBIF resource ID has for quite some time been replaced by the GBIF registry UUID in all our API. The example above uses the Fauna Europaea dataset as it is registered with the id for Aagaardia sivertseni: http://www.faunaeur.org/full_results.php?id=409106

Please be aware that we have a rather old version of Fauna Europaea and if you intend to use our service with up to date data it would be great if you could publish Fauna Europaea on a regular basis as a dwc archive. We are happy to assist you in setting this up, ideally with an IPT.


Name based URLs are definitely interesting and we should think about adding them in the next API version. For now the searches are the only way to link.

best,
Markus


On 22 Jul 2014, at 15:29, Jong, Yde de <Y.S.D.M.deJong at uva.nl> wrote:

> Dear Markus,
> 
> Two questions related to the below topic:
> 
> (1) We fully agree that using species identifiers should be the preferred way to optimise cross-linking to the GBIF resources. In this context we use the features of the GBIF Checklist Bank to create direct links from Fauna Europaea species identifiers to GBIF identifiers to connect Fauna Europaea species pages to the relevant result pages in the GBIF portal.
> 
> So far we used http://data.gbif.org/species/305289/resource/13560 as URL.
> 
> 305289 is the FaEu species ID and 13560 is the FaEu resource ID in the GBIF data portal / Checklist Bank.
> 
> My question: what is the proper syntax of the URL for the new portal?
> 
> ———
> 
> (2) There a wide range of use-cases on name-based URLs, including:
> 
> . . . /species/Rhus_typhina
> . . . /t/name/Rhus_typhina
> . . . /taxon/name/Rhus_typhina
> . . . /taxonname/Rhus_typhina
> . . . /species/find/Rhus_typhina
> . . . /name/search/Rhus_typhina
> 
> Similar story for species ID URLs.
> 
> Couldn't we agree on a consensus regarding the URL syntax?
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Yde
> 
> ————————————————
> 
> Op 19 jul. 2014, om 21:52 heeft Ken-ichi het volgende geschreven:
> 
>> Yup, we have the same issue at iNat, but it's still useful to perform
>> scientific name-based URLs. For one thing it's enormously convenient
>> for me to type in
>> 
>> http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Rhus%20typhina
>> 
>> instead of searching for the correct taxon ID and going to
>> http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/167829. I suppose it's even easier to
>> search for "rhus typina gbif" in Google, but occasionally the top
>> result is some kind of checklist view and not the main taxon page. For
>> another thing, it lets partner sites like ours link to your content
>> without have a priori knowledge of your internal identifiers. We
>> really want to link to your taxon pages, but we really *don't* want to
>> maintain a local list of *all* your identifiers that we have to keep
>> synced.
>> 
>> In situations where there are multiple valid taxa with the same name,
>> we redirect to our search page, e.g.
>> http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Cantharellus. You could also imagine
>> rendering a custom response stating explicitly that there are multiple
>> ways to resolve that name, e.g. with a "300 multiple options for the
>> resource delivered" response.
>> 
>> In situations where there is a 1-to-1 correspondence between the
>> requested name and a different, more recent synonym, we redirect to
>> the most recent concept, e.g.
>> http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hyla%20regilla
>> 
>> Also, while I'm not an SEO expert, I'm pretty sure having the taxon
>> name in the URL will help boost the rank of your taxon pages in
>> searches for scientific names (I'm also pretty sure having multiple
>> URLs pointing to the same content is bad for SEO, so we at iNat should
>> probably be more consistent about using 302 redirects to the canonical
>> URLs).
>> 
>> On Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 3:09 AM, Markus Döring <mdoering at gbif.org> wrote:
>>> Hi Ken-ichi,
>>> the taxon page /species/{ID} is the one you should link to. We keep those identifiers stable and the (canonical) name alone is often a homonym and not guaranteed to be unique or even stable (we might correct typos for example).
>>> 
>>> best,
>>> Markus
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 18 Jul 2014, at 22:36, Ken-ichi <kenichi.ueda at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Is there a way to link to a scientific name on the new GBIF? The old
>>>> one would (and still does) let you link to taxon pages like this
>>>> 
>>>> http://data.gbif.org/species/Rhus_typhina
>>>> 
>>>> but the new GBIF seems to require an identifier in the URL. I could
>>>> just link to http://www.gbif.org/species/search?q=Rhus%20typhina, but
>>>> I'd rather link directly to the taxon page. Possible?
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> API-users mailing list
>>>> API-users at lists.gbif.org
>>>> http://lists.gbif.org/mailman/listinfo/api-users
>>>> 
>>> 
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