EOL Data services

Help and FAQ
61

@Natasha, could you send a sample url? This, for instance, is working for me:

https://eol.org/api/pages/1.0/46577088.xml?id=&images_per_page=1&images_page=2

62

Currently weā€™re using this:
https://www.eol.org/api/pages/1.0/7674.json?images_per_page=24&videos_per_page=0&images_page=1&sounds_per_page=0&videos_page=0&sounds_page=0&maps_page=0&texts_page=0&iucn=false&subjects=overview&details=true&common_names=false&licenses=all&cache_ttl=3600

Seems to work if images_page is 0 but anything higher returns the error.

63

Thanks @jrice, this does indeed fix the extra array level, but it appears that something else changed at the same time. This might be related to the issue @Natasha mentioned, but Iā€™m not seeing a 500 error, Iā€™m just not getting any images or text articles returned. This worked over the weekend to return both images and text results:

https://eol.org/api/pages/46570907.json?batch=false&images_per_page=10&images_page=1&texts_per_page=10&texts_page=1&subjects=overview&licenses=all&details=true&common_names=true&synonyms=true&references=true&taxonomy=true&vetted=0&cache_ttl=&language=en

Update: Looking at @hammockj post, I tried changing the images_per_page on the above from 10 to 1 and did get an image result, so it appears to be an issue when requesting multiple items. The same thing with texts_per_page.

Thanks,

Greg

64

@hammockj Are we able to get sounds through the pages API at the moment? Iā€™ve tried a few different ids and none seem to return any data objects.

The following url returns no data objects:
https://eol.org/api/pages/1.0/491995.json?details=true&sounds_per_page=10

65

Sorry, no sounds at the moment. They havenā€™t been moved over from EOL v2 yet!

66

Update: Looking at @hammockj post, I tried changing the images_per_page on the above from 10 to 1 and did get an image result, so it appears to be an issue when requesting multiple items. The same thing with texts_per_page.

Sorry, fencepost error. Was rushing. Should work now!

67

Thanks @jrice, just tested it and it is indeed working again.

Cheers,

Greg

68

@jrice Thanks again, the 500 error is no longer appearing. Any idea when sounds might be back though?

69

Iā€™ve moved audio and video hosting up the to do list, @Natasha, but youā€™ll have to give us a month or two. The to do list is long and everything is urgent :slight_smile: Please nag us again in January if we havenā€™t delivered.

70

Thank you! images_page is working for me now :slight_smile:

71

Thank you, I can confirm that images are working again. However there are still a lot of dead image links in the results, is that expected and will resolve in the future? For example, this API call returns 4 images, which are all missing:

http://eol.org/api/pages/1.0/50032922.json?language=de&images_page=1&images_per_page=10&maps_per_page=0&videos_per_page=0&sounds_per_page=0&texts_per_page=10&details=true&common_names=true&taxonomy=true&synonyms=false&references=false

Missing image: https://content.eol.org/data/media/8a/e1/84/15.FB-pic-5399-24045.jpg

(the mediaURL is still working, but the eolMediaURL not)

Additionally, a lot of dataObjects of the type ā€œDCMI: DCMI Metadata Termsā€ are only available in Spanish or Italian, the English text descriptions which were availble previously are all gone. Can you confirm that this will be added in the future? Thank you!

72

Thanks for reporting, @divinglog. It looks like the media download for that partner didnā€™t complete. We should be able to retrieve those; stand by.

73

Hi,

Iā€™ve been using the EoL API for summary data and Iā€™ve been having a few problems.

Firstly, the filter_by_string option on /search seems to generate a 500 error. For example https://eol.org/api/search/1.0.json?q=Acacia+dealbata&filter_by_string=Fabaceae

Secondly, I donā€™t seem to be able to get any English overview or summary text entries. All the summary texts that I can find seem to be from the Italian or Spanish wikipedias. For example, https://eol.org/api/pages/1.0/122672.json?texts_per_page=75&subjects=overview&vetted=0&language=en&details=true

Doug

74

Thanks for reporting, @charvolant ! Iā€™m sorry about the gap in text object service. We hit a delay in migrating in our largest sources of text. Weā€™re working on it.

Paging @jrice to investigate the /search string filter issueā€¦

Jen

75

No worries. Now Iā€™ve got the API sorted a bit better weā€™re seeing various bits and pieces of text, rather than an ominous silence.

76

I work with @charvolant and it appears we sometime get blocked due to exceeding some maximum rate limit (e.g. with https://eol.org/api/pages/1.0 or https://eol.org/api/search/1.0 request). Iā€™m happy to add a rate limiter to our code and would like to know what the threshold is before weā€™re blocked (requests per second) so I can prevent us hitting that limit.

FYI, I noticed the ā€œData servicesā€ page makes mention of:

we ask that you observe query rate limits

but I couldnā€™t find any mention of what the actual limits value was, on any of the pages linked off that page (including the various terms of use pages).

77

The rate is currently 1rps, which should be mentioned in the robots.txt file. ā€¦We may increase that in the months to come, so it could be worth re-checking. Thanks!

78

thanks for your patience, @charvolant- filter_by_string should return results now.

79

Sorry for the delay, @divinglog! Weā€™ve got the FishBase resource downloaded; those broken images should be working now.

Jen

80

Thank you @hammockj, seems to be working fine!