The MIRC RadLex Servlet

This article describes the MIRC RadLex Servlet which provides access to MIRC's RadLex term index. The intended audience for this article is software developers who want to provide a suggest-like user interface for web pages or other applications.

The servlet is a RESTful web service which is accessed by an HTTP GET in the form:

http://ip:port/mirc/radlex?key=string

where string is a set of URL-encoded characters. The string parameter is used as an index into the RadLex term index. All terms whose first word starts with the string parameter are returned in an XML structure. The Content-Type of the response is text/xml, and the encoding is UTF-8.

The following example shows the response to a GET with the string parameter equal to inter:

<RadLexTerms>
	<term id="RL196">interatrial septum</term> 
	<term id="RL328">intercostal arteries</term> 
	<term id="RL449">intercostal muscles</term> 
	<term id="RL459">intercostal nerves</term> 
	<term id="RL1316">intermediate perceptual difficulty</term> 
	<term id="RL1320">intermediate analytical difficulty</term> 
	<term id="RL1057">intermediate cell type</term> 
	<term id="RL782">intermediate signal</term> 
	<term id="RL625">intermediate</term> 
	<term id="RL447">internal abdominal oblique muscle</term> 
	<term id="RL392">internal mammary lymph nodes</term> 
	<term id="RL1095">interstitial pneumonias</term> 
	<term id="RL197">interventricular septum</term> 
</RadLexTerms>

Note, the result shown above is based on a previous form of the RadLex ontology whose id values were different from those used today. The format of the result, however, correctly illustrates how the matching terms are returned.

The order of the returned terms is as follows:

• Terms are in alphabetical order based on the first word of the term.
• Terms with the same first word are in reverse order based on the length of the term (e.g., longest first).