Hello, I wrote a script to automatically fetch screenshots from the UCSC browser, and I would like to ask if you can check that it respects all the guidelines for automating queries to your tool.
The script is currently available at this address: https://bitbucket.org/dalloliogm/ucsc-fetch/overview . It takes three files as inputs: the first file is a list of regions to show; the second file defines which tracks to visualise; and the third file contains configuration options, such as http proxies and URLs to custom UCSC browser installations. For each region defined, the script automatically connects to a UCSC browser installation and retrieves the pdf of the visualization, making use of the "hgt.psOutput=on" option. Then, optionally, the script creates a multi-page report showing results from different regions in a single document; see https://bitbucket.org/dalloliogm/ucsc-fetch/raw/tip/reports/example1_example_config_default.pdf(warning: pdf file) for an example. See also the home page of the script for more information. I have searched in the UCSC faqs and the archives of this mailing list to check what is your policy about automating queries, and I have found this page: http://genome.ucsc.edu/FAQ/FAQdownloads.html#download2 So, I have implemented a sleep interval of 15 seconds between each query; I could not find a easy way to limit the queries to 5,000 per day, but in any case I won't be using it so much. Plus, the script provides, in the User-Agent field, my email address and the address of the script's home page, so you will be able to identify it in your server logs. What else should I do to respect your policy about automating queries? Note also that I have uploaded the script to bitbucket as a publicly accessible project. I thought that this could be a good idea, since I could not find many other scripts to automate queries to the UCSC browser on Internet. However, if you are not ok with this, I can remove the repository from bitbucket or make it private. Thank you very much, Gio -- Giovanni Dall'Olio, phd student IBE, Institut de Biologia Evolutiva, CEXS-UPF (Barcelona, Spain) My blog on bioinformatics: http://bioinfoblog.it _______________________________________________ Genome maillist - [email protected] https://lists.soe.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/genome
