easy-entrez

Python REST API for Entrez E-Utilities, aiming to be easy to use and reliable.

Easy-entrez:

• makes common tasks easy thanks to simple Pythonic API,
• is typed and integrates well with mypy,
• is tested on Windows, Mac and Linux across Python 3.6, 3.7, 3.8 and 3.9,
• is limited in scope, allowing to focus on the reliability of the core code,
• does not use the stateful API as it is error-prone as seen on example of the alternative entrezpy.

Status: beta (pending tutorial write-up and documentation improvements before official release).

from easy_entrez import EntrezAPI

entrez_api = EntrezAPI(
    'your-tool-name',
    'e@mail.com',
    # optional
    return_type='json'
)

# find up to 10 000 results for cancer in human
result = entrez_api.search('cancer AND human[organism]', max_results=10_000)

# data will be populated with JSON or XML (depending on the `return_type` value)
result.data

See more in the Demo notebook and documentation.

For a real-world example (i.e. used for this publication) see notebooks in multi-omics-state-of-the-field repository.

Example: fetching genes for a variant from dbSNP

Fetch the SNP record for rs6311:

rs6311 = entrez_api.fetch(['rs6311'], max_results=1, database='snp').data[0]
rs6311

Display the result:

from xml.dom import minidom
from xml.etree import ElementTree


def xml_to_sting(element):
    return (
        minidom.parseString(ElementTree.tostring(element))
        .toprettyxml(indent=' ' * 4)
    )


print(xml_to_sting(rs6311))

Find the gene names for rs6311:

namespaces = {'ns0': 'https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/SNP/docsum'}
genes = [
    name.text
    for name in rs6311.findall('.//ns0:GENE_E/ns0:NAME', namespaces)
]
print(genes)

['HTR2A']

Fetch data for multiple variants at once:

result = entrez_api.fetch(['rs6311', 'rs662138'], max_results=10, database='snp')
gene_names = {
    'rs' + document_summary.get('uid'): [
        element.text
        for element in document_summary.findall('.//ns0:GENE_E/ns0:NAME', namespaces)
    ]
    for document_summary in result.data
}
print(gene_names)

{'rs6311': ['HTR2A'], 'rs662138': ['SLC22A1']}

Example: obtaining the SNP rs ID number from chromosomal position

You can use the query string directly:

results = entrez_api.search(
    '13[CHROMOSOME] AND human[ORGANISM] AND 31873085[POSITION]',
    database='snp',
    max_results=10
)
print(results.data['esearchresult']['idlist'])

['59296319', '17076752', '7336701', '4']

Or pass a dictionary (no validation of arguments is performed, AND conjunction is used):

results = entrez_api.search(
    dict(chromosome=13, organism='human', position=31873085),
    database='snp',
    max_results=10
)
print(results.data['esearchresult']['idlist'])

['59296319', '17076752', '7336701', '4']

The base position should use the latest genome assembly (GRCh38 at the time of writing); you can use the position in previous assembly coordinates by replacing POSITION with POSITION_GRCH37. For more information of the arguments accepted by the SNP database see the entrez help page on NCBI website.

Installation

Requires Python 3.6+. Install with:

pip install easy-entrez

If you wish to enable (optional, tqdm-based) progress bars use:

pip install easy-entrez[with_progress_bars]

Alternatives:

You might want to try:

• biopython.Entrez - biopython is a heavy dependency, but probably good choice if you already use it
• pubmedpy - provides interesting utilities for parsing the responses
• entrez - appears to have a comparable scope but quite different API

I have tried and do not recommend:

• entrezpy - in addition to the history problems, watch out for documentation issues and basically no reaction to pull requests.