The NCBI provides a web service interface to PubMed. For searching this is a two-step process that first performs the search then retrieves the results. Here's an example in PHP5:
if ($xml = simplexml_load_file('http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esearch.fcgi?db=pubmed&retmax=0&usehistory=y&term=' . urlencode($argv[1]))){
if ($xml = simplexml_load_file("http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esummary.fcgi?db=pubmed&retmode=xml&query_key={$xml->QueryKey}&WebEnv={$xml->WebEnv}&retstart=0&retmax=10")){
$docs = $xml->DocSum;
}
}
print_r($docs);
The query terms are passed in as a command line argument. The retstart and retmax parameters determine the offset and number of items to return. See the EUtils documentation for full information.
Comments
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Is it possible to search by values such as author and title as well as by term?
Yes - just put one of PubMed's filters[1] in square brackets at the end
of the search term, the same as you would in PubMed's web interface. "Melancon B"[AU], for example.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=helppubmed.section.pubmedhelp.Search_Field_Descrip
Is it possible to retrieve the mesh terms of an article? How do I achieve this by API in my program? Thank you
How do I retrieve the full abstract for each of the results retrieved ?
The xml returned has a field 1 which indicates whether the article has a abstract or not .
What parameter do I use in the query to fetch the entire abstract ?