The Navigating Cancer APIs are REST APIs with documentation of the API syntax, function names, parameters, and responses available through our API documentation page. In addition to the information on the Swagger page, a user will also need an API key in order to authenticate. With the Swagger documentation and an API key (see API key acquisition information below), a developer will have all the information they need to develop their own tools to access our APIs.
Before using the API, be sure to review our Terms of Use in order to fully understand the rights and responsibilities that are implied by use of the NC APIs.
To register to use our API and obtain your key for the Navigating Cancer APIs, please contact our customer support at support@navigatingcancer.com. Our support professional will gather information about your use case and your identity. They will then work with engineering to have an API key created for you and will contact you with your new API key.
There are no special software components or configuration necessary to use this API. These APIs are REST APIs and can be accessed with any HTTP client that supports HTTPS, specifically HTTP over TLS v1.0-1.2. For example, it is understood that you can test your API key with our API using only a web browser. The JSON response structure returned by our FHIR API methods are documented within each method description. The XML response for the CCDA API conforms to the specification for C-CDA R2.1.
The implemented API functions are documented using the OpenAPI specification version 2.0 at our API documentation page. This documentation is the authoritative list of all the Resources that our FHIR API implements. Our FHIR API implementation is based off of the Argonaut FHIR specification, but is limited to the resources specified in the API documentation and the mappings below.
For each FHIR API resource, an example of a successful response is shown first as "Response Class (Status 200)". An example response is shown in the text box, and the structure of the response can also be shown in the text box when you click on the word "Model" above the text box. The parameters, required and optional, are plainly shown in the "Parameters" section of the API method documentation, with descriptions of what the parameter is, where it is found, and the data type of the parameter. The next section is the "Response Messages" section, which details response codes for various errors that may occur for each API method. The "Try it out!" button is a form submit which will perform an API access with any and all parameters that have been filled in for the API method. After the form submission, the method documentation becomes updated with the constructed URL for the HTTP(s) request and the actual API response in another text box.
The CCDA API is slightly different from the FHIR API in that it returns a CCDv3 XML document that conforms to the CCDA R2.1 specification instead of a JSON response for the FHIR APIs. Otherwise, the API documentation can be used as a tool to access our API in the same way as it can be used to access our FHIR API.