Introduction
You can control IGB by embedding IGB links in Web pages. This is useful when you need to manually inspect a large number of regions. By clicking links in an IGB links page, you can quickly move to a new region.
IGB links syntax
When IGB launches, it starts a "bookmark server" at localhost, port 7085.
If you launch a second instance of IGB while one is already running, the new instance will listen to a different port. For this reason, bookmark links will only work for the first IGB instance only.
IGB uses this internal server to handle HTTP requests.
An IGB link base URL is structured as
http://localhost:7085/UnibrowControl?[parameter]
Show a region
IGB link syntax to show a region is:
http://localhost:7085/UnibrowControl?version=[version]&seqid=[seqid]
start=[start]&end=[end]
Parameters include:
- version - genome version
- start - start position of the region to show
- end - end position of the region to show
- seqid - chromosome sequence
Example:
Other parameters are also available. If you're developing IGB links, it helps to open up an exported IGB bookmarks file in a text editor and take a look at how the links are structured.
Other options
Scriptfile
As of IGB 6.3, you can use the scriptfile parameter to send commands to IGB, where scriptfile designates a local file or URL
http://localhost:7085/UnibrowControl?scriptfile=[file or URL]
- For IGB command line syntax, see Scripting and the IGB command language.