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SQL Downloads</a> </li> <li class="nav-item" data-depth="2"> <a class="nav-link" href="api-sql-download-functions">API SQL Downloads – Functions</a> </li> <li class="nav-item" data-depth="2"> <a class="nav-link" href="data-cubes">Species occurrence cubes</a> </li> </ul> </li> <li class="nav-item" data-depth="1"> <a class="nav-link" href="../cloud-services/">Cloud computing services</a> </li> <li class="nav-item" data-depth="1"> <a class="nav-link" href="citation">Citation</a> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> </nav> </div> </div> </aside> </div> <main class="article"> <div class="toolbar" role="navigation"> <button class="nav-toggle"></button> <a href="../" class="home-link"></a> <nav class="breadcrumbs" aria-label="breadcrumbs"> <ul> <li><a href="./">Data Use</a></li> <li><a href="./">Using data</a></li> </ul> </nav> </div> <div class="content"> <aside class="toc sidebar" data-title="Page contents" data-levels="-1"> <div class="toc-menu"></div> </aside> <article class="doc"> <h1 class="page">Using data</h1> <div id="preamble"> <div class="sectionbody"> <div class="imageblock text-center"> <div class="content"> <img src="_images/data-use.png" alt="data use" width="320" height="192"> </div> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>GBIF users can access the data they need in several ways, and each method generally offers data in a choice of formats.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>The easiest option is to use the <a href="https://www.gbif.org/">GBIF website</a>, which allows searching and browsing individual records, as well as requesting data downloads in the most common formats.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>For more structured access, consider using the GBIF API, either directly or using the <strong>rgbif</strong> or <strong>pygbif</strong> libraries.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>Some workflows are best served using cloud computing systems, and GBIF data is available on Amazon AWS, Google GCS and Microsoft Azure for this purpose.</p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="sect1"> <h2 id="data-downloads"><a class="anchor" href="#data-downloads"></a>Data downloads</h2> <div class="sectionbody"> <div class="paragraph"> <p>Downloads can be requested in three main formats: Simple, Darwin Core Archive and Species List. Registered users may create them using the website or through the API, or using rgbif or pygbif.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>See <a href="api-downloads" class="xref page">API Downloads</a> for creating a download directly through the API. See <a href="rgbif" class="xref page">rgbif</a> and <a href="pygbif" class="xref page">pygbif</a> for creating downloads using R or Python.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>See <a href="download-formats" class="xref page">Occurrence download formats</a> for details on the structure of each download format, regardless of how it was created.</p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="sect1"> <h2 id="api-usage"><a class="anchor" href="#api-usage"></a>API usage</h2> <div class="sectionbody"> <div class="admonitionblock tip"> <table> <tr> <td class="icon"> <i class="fa icon-tip" title="Tip"></i> </td> <td class="content"> Complete documentation on the API is available in the <a href="../openapi/" class="xref page">API Reference</a> section. </td> </tr> </table> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>The GBIF API provides a programmatic way to query and publish data on GBIF.org. It can be useful or necessary to use the API to</p> </div> <div class="ulist"> <ul> <li> <p>make advanced queries, not supported by the website,</p> </li> <li> <p>include the results of GBIF queries in scripts, workflows or analyses, which can then be repeated reliably and automatically,</p> </li> <li> <p>embed GBIF data into other websites.</p> </li> </ul> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>It can be accessed by any programming language, from a command-line terminal interface, or in some cases using a web browser.</p> </div> <div class="sect2"> <h3 id="rgbif"><a class="anchor" href="#rgbif"></a>rgbif</h3> <div class="paragraph"> <p><strong>rgbif</strong> is a library maintained by GBIF for the R statistical programming language. See <a href="rgbif" class="xref page">rgbif</a>.</p> </div> </div> <div class="sect2"> <h3 id="pygbif"><a class="anchor" href="#pygbif"></a>pygbif</h3> <div class="paragraph"> <p><strong>pygbif</strong> is a library maintained by GBIF for the Python programming language. See <a href="pygbif" class="xref page">pygbif</a>.</p> </div> </div> <div class="sect2"> <h3 id="other-programming-languages"><a class="anchor" href="#other-programming-languages"></a>Other programming languages</h3> <div class="paragraph"> <p><strong>Java</strong> clients for the APIs are maintained by GBIF and linked in the <a href="../openapi/" class="xref page">API reference documentation</a>.</p> </div> <div class="paragraph"> <p>There are also clients for <strong>Ruby</strong> (<a href="https://www.rubydoc.info/gems/gbifrb">gbifrb</a>) and <strong>PHP</strong> (<a href="https://gitlab.res-telae.cat/restelae/php-gbif">php-gbif</a>). These clients are not maintained by GBIF.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="sect1"> <h2 id="cloud-computing-services"><a class="anchor" href="#cloud-computing-services"></a>Cloud computing services</h2> <div class="sectionbody"> <div class="paragraph"> <p>Each month, an export of GBIF occurrence data is uploaded to various cloud computing services. These services allow users to query the data, integrate it into workflows running on cloud or local systems and make more complex queries than are possible using the GBIF API. See <a href="../cloud-services/" class="xref page">Cloud computing services</a> for more information.</p> </div> </div> </div> <div class="sect1"> <h2 id="citation"><a class="anchor" href="#citation"></a>Citation</h2> <div class="sectionbody"> <div class="paragraph"> <p>Under the terms of the GBIF data user agreement, users who download data agree to cite a DOI. Please see GBIF’s <a href="https://www.gbif.org/citation-guidelines">citation guidelines</a>.</p> </div> </div> </div> <nav class="pagination"> <span class="next"><a href="download-formats">Occurrence download formats</a></span> </nav> </article> </div> </main> </div> <footer class="footer"> <div class="horizontal-stripe light-background"> <div class="footer-container"> <nav class="site-footer__menu"> <div> <a href="https://www.gbif.org/">GBIF.org</a> <a href="https://data-blog.gbif.org/">Data blog</a> <a href="https://www.gbif.org/terms">Terms and agreements</a> <a href="https://www.gbif.org/contact-us">Contact</a> </div> <div> <strong>GBIF Secretariat</strong> • Universitetsparken 15 • DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø • Denmark </div> </nav> </div> </div> <div class="horizontal-stripe"> <div class="footer-container"> <a href="https://www.gbif.org/"><img src="https://www.gbif.org/img/full_logo_white.svg" alt="GBIF"></a> </div> </div> </footer> <script id="site-script" src="../_/js/site.js" data-ui-root-path="../_"></script> <script async src="../_/js/vendor/highlight.js"></script> <script src="../_/js/vendor/lunr.js"></script> <script src="../_/js/search-ui.js" id="search-ui-script" data-site-root-path=".." data-snippet-length="100" data-stylesheet="../_/css/search.css"></script> <script async src="../search-index.js"></script> <script defer data-domain="techdocs.gbif.org" src="https://plausible.io/js/script.file-downloads.js"></script> </body> </html>