Integrating with External APplications

It is now possible to create links to WebFR3D that will pre-populate the WebFR3D search page. This functionality can be used to create a link or a button on an external website, that will say something like Search PDB 1J5E using WebFR3D. Clicking on such a link will take the user to a page where 1J5E will already be selected in the list of PDB files to be searched. This task can be accomplished in two ways.

Passing PDB ids in the URL

Just append the list of files in the following format to the standard urls for geometric or symbolic WebFR3D search pages:

http://rna.bgsu.edu/webfr3d/symbolic?pdb_ids=<comma-separated list of pdb ids>
http://rna.bgsu.edu/webfr3d/geometric?pdb_ids=<comma-separated list of pdb ids>

For example, the following URLs select PDB files 2AVY and 1J5E on the WebFR3D query pages:

http://rna.bgsu.edu/webfr3d/symbolic?pdb_ids=2AVY,1J5E
http://rna.bgsu.edu/webfr3d/geometric?pdb_ids=2AVY,1J5E

This approach can be used for specifying up to around 380 pdb ids, because the maximum URL length is ~2000 characters.

Passing PDB ids using forms and POST requests

To pass longer lists of pdb files, you can include a form on your webpage, for example:

<form method="post" action="http://rna.bgsu.edu/webfr3d/symbolic">
<input type="hidden" name="pdb_ids" value="2AVY,1J5E">
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

You can see this in action by clicking “Submit” on the bottom right of the Jsfiddle demonstration page. WebFR3D should load with pdbs 2AVY and 1J5E already selected.

If the specified string of characters is not a valid PDB id, it will not be selected.