EMBL RESTful API post request error

Hello,

I would like to post a request to the EMBL RESTful API (well known Bioinformatics database) to get data relative to two different IDs (as an example: ENSG00000157764 and ENSG00000248378) but I am encountering the following error:

server = 'https://rest.ensembl.org';
ext = '/lookup/id';
data = '{ "ids" : ["ENSG00000157764", "ENSG00000248378" ] }';
options = weboptions('ArrayFormat','json','MediaType','application/json','HeaderFields',{'Content-Type' 'application/json';'Accept' 'application/json'},'RequestMethod','post');
r = webwrite([server,ext],data, options);

Error using webwrite (line 136)

Internal error: "curl_multi_remove_handle" failed with CURLMcode API function called from

within callback.

I am able to run this request using Python 3 like in there:

https://rest.ensembl.org/documentation/info/lookup_post

As part of the BioInformatics toolbox there are functions (getembl, emblread) but I cannot get them to work either.

Maybe it is a syntax problem or an option that I did not specify. I'll be happy to submit the MATLAB version for their website.

Thank you very much for the help!

Sandrine

Answer 1

[Ive J]

You are almost there, except that MATLAB doesn't have a dictionary data type as Python3 has, so you should construct a struct instead:

getURL = 'https://rest.ensembl.org/lookup/id';
headers = {'Content-Type' 'application/json'; 'Accept' 'application/json'};
options = weboptions('RequestMethod', 'post', 'HeaderFields', headers, 'ArrayFormat', 'json');
data = struct('ids', ["ENSG00000157764", "ENSG00000248378"]);
r = webwrite(getURL, data, options)

  struct with fields:

    ENSG00000248378: [1×1 struct]
    ENSG00000157764: [1×1 struct]

[Sandrine]

Thank you so much!