# /drugbank/drugs/search

`POST /api/drugbank/drugs/search`

Price: 20 credits

Browse the DrugBank drug index. Filter by development-status group (approved, investigational, experimental, withdrawn, illicit, nutraceutical), by approval region (US, Canada, EU) and by modality (small molecule or biologic); order by name or molecular weight. Each row carries the DrugBank accession number, name, description, molecular formula and weight and the therapeutic categories, as names and as the matching category accession numbers.

## How to use it

`categories` and `category_ids` are the index's own class list for the drug, positionally paired, and the ids go straight to drugbank/categories; it is a different list from the chip row drugbank/drugs returns for the same drug, so neither one subsumes the other. This browses an index, it does not search text: there is no keyword, name or indication parameter anywhere, and DrugBank's own text search is unavailable to us, so a drug name cannot be resolved to an id by any endpoint here. Use it to enumerate a segment — every withdrawn drug, every biologic approved in the EU — and feed the ids to drugbank/drugs. `groups` is inclusive: listing two groups returns drugs in either, and leaving it unset returns the whole index rather than nothing, which is roughly five times the approved-only set. `modality` picks between two disjoint indexes, so a biologic never appears in the small-molecule listing and a request must be repeated for each. Rows carry only the summary fields; mechanism, indication, brand names and the external identifiers need drugbank/drugs per id.

## Parameters

- `access-token` (string, required)

## Request body

- `timeout` (integer) — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
- `groups` (array, nullable) — Keep only drugs in at least one of these development-status groups. Unset browses every drug of the chosen modality (one of: "approved", "investigational", "experimental", "withdrawn", "illicit", "nutraceutical"; examples: ["approved"], ["withdrawn","illicit"])
- `regions` (array, nullable) — Keep only drugs approved in at least one of these regions (one of: "us", "ca", "eu"; examples: ["us"])
- `modality` (string) — Which index to browse: small-molecule drugs or biologics. They do not overlap (default: "small_molecule"; one of: "small_molecule", "biologic")
- `sort` (string) — Field the index is ordered by (default: "name"; one of: "name", "weight")
- `sort_desc` (boolean) — Order descending (default: false)
- `count` (integer, required) — Number of drugs to return (min: 1; max: 1000)

## Response

### 200 — Successful Response

- `@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: [])

## Errors

### 422 — Validation Error

The request body did not validate

What to do: Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.

- `detail` (array)
  - `loc` (array, required)
  - `msg` (string, required)
  - `type` (string, required)
  - `input` (any)
  - `ctx` (object)

### 408

The request ran past its time limit

What to do: 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

The entity was not found, or a precondition failed

What to do: 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

What to do: 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

What to do: 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

What to do: Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

## Response envelope

Success: Array of objects (may be empty if no results)

Error: Error may coexist with partial results if it occurs mid-execution. Check X-Error header and status code.

Every response carries these 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.