Frequently Asked Questions: Linking to the Genome Browser
| Linking to the Genome Browser from another software application Linking to the browser at the position of a knownCanonical transcript associated with a gene symbol The hgsid parameter Return to FAQ Table of Contents |
Linking to the Genome Browser from another software application |
| Question: "How do I construct a hyperlink to the Genome Browser from my software?" Response: Link to the Genome Browser using a URL of the form: http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTracks?org=[org]&db=[db]&position=[position]. org - specifies the genome in which you're interested (see Displaying Your Own Annotation in the Genome Browser for a list of acceptable values). This parameter defaults to the latest Genome Browser assembly for that species. db - designates a specific assembly version. For example, to refer to the July 2003 human release, you would use db=hg16. The db parameter takes precedence over the org parameter. For a list of the db parameter values that correspond to UCSC assemblies, see the list of UCSC releases. position - can be any search value valid for the genome specified by org. |
Linking to the browser at the position of a knownCanonical transcript associated with a gene symbol |
| Question: "How do I link to the browser from my application so that it will open at the position of the transcript in knownCanonical table that is associated with a given gene symbol?" Response: Using the URL described above, set the position parameter to the gene symbol and add the parameter singleSearch=knownCanonical. For example, this link will open the Genome Browser for the hg18 human assembly at the position of the knownCanonical transcript associated with GABRA3: http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTracks?org=human&db=hg18&singleSearch=knownCanonical&position=GABRA3 |
The hgsid parameter |
| Question: "What is the hgsid parameter? Should I include it in URLs that link to the Genome Browser?" Response: The hgsid parameter is a temporary internally-used parameter that should not be used when constructing links to the Genome Browser. |