/drugbank/categories

POST /api/drugbank/categories

Price: 10 credits

Get one DrugBank therapeutic category by its accession number. Returns the category name, its description, any accession numbers merged into it, its ATC classification codes, every drug DrugBank files under it with accession number, name and description, and the drug-target pairs the category page publishes for those drugs, each with the target's own bio-entity accession number.

How to use it

The way to turn a therapeutic class into drug ids in one call: `drugs` is the full membership list, not a first page, so a category with thousands of members returns all of them and the response can run to megabytes — `drug_count` from drugbank/categories/search tells you which before you call. `drug_targets` is the one place on this platform that exposes drug-target pairs at all; on an individual drug they are behind a paid account. Where the category page publishes the block the list is that table in full, one entry per published pair, and each entry carries the target's own `target_id` bio-entity accession, which is what separates two targets that share a display name. Read it against `target_count` from drugbank/categories/search: the two agree except for the odd row of drift, since the index count and the page table are refreshed independently, and where the page does not publish the block the list comes back empty against a non-zero `target_count` — so an empty list means the pairs were not published on that page rather than that the class has none. Category ids come from drugbank/categories/search or from the `categories` field of drugbank/drugs. Member rows carry only an id, a name and a description — the rest of each drug needs drugbank/drugs. `atc_classes` gives the WHO ATC codes from the broadest level down to the most specific, where DrugBank has mapped the category at all. DrugBank merges duplicate categories: `alternative_ids` lists the accession numbers folded into this one, and each of them resolves here to this same record.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• category_id string required — DrugBank category accession number. Case-insensitive, and a go.drugbank.com category URL is accepted in place of the id (examples: "DBCAT000002", "https://go.drugbank.com/categories/DBCAT000049"; minLength: 1)

Response

• @type string (default: "DrugbankCategory")
• id string required
• name string (default: "")
• web_url string (default: "")
• description string (default: "")
• alternative_ids array (default: [])
• atc_classes array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "DrugbankAtcClass")
  • code string (default: "")
  • name string (default: "")
• drug_count integer nullable
• drugs array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "DrugbankDrugSummary")
  • id string required
  • name string (default: "")
  • web_url string (default: "")
  • description string (default: "")
  • molecular_formula string (default: "")
  • molecular_weight number nullable
  • categories array (default: [])
  • category_ids array (default: [])
• drug_targets array (default: [])
  • @type string (default: "DrugbankCategoryTarget")
  • drug_id string (default: "")
  • drug_name string (default: "")
  • target_id string (default: "")
  • target string (default: "")
  • target_type string (default: "")

Errors

• 422 — category_id was not a DrugBank category accession number — DBCAT followed by exactly six digits Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.
• 408 — The request ran past its time limit Raise `timeout` in the request body, up to the maximum this endpoint documents. Lowering `count` or turning off the `with_*` flags also helps, because less work finishes sooner.
• 412 — No category with that accession number. Ids look like DBCAT000002 Retrying will not help: either the entity does not exist, or the input points at a different one.
• 429 — Too many requests: a rate limit or a usage window is exhausted When the response carries an X-Retry-After header, wait that many seconds and retry: the same number is in the body as `detail.retry_after`, and the limit clears once that window passes. The message in the body names the limit that was hit.
• 500 — Something broke on our side Retrying will not help. If it keeps happening, send us the X-Request-ID from the response headers.
• 529 — Rate limit reached, or the endpoint is overloaded Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

Response headers

• X-Error — Error message text (present only on error)
• X-Request-ID — Unique request identifier
• X-Execution-Time — Execution time in seconds
• X-Result-Count — How many records the body carries. 0 means an empty result, which is a normal answer and not by itself an error. A non-zero count can come back together with X-Error when the failure happened partway through — read this header and X-Error independently.
• X-Total-Available-Results — How many records exist for this query, when the endpoint can say. On a `dry_run` request this is the answer and the body is empty. It saturates: the endpoint's documented maximum means 'at least that many', any smaller number is exact.
• X-Warning — Present when the request body carried keys this endpoint does not document. They were ignored, so any filter you meant to apply through them did not apply. Check the spelling against this schema and retry.
• X-Retry-After — Seconds to wait before retrying. Present only on 429.