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NCI Glossary Term API

Serves the NCI Dictionary of Cancer Terms — the authoritative plain-language and health-professional definitions used across cancer.gov and by the NCI Dictionary Widget. Supports autosuggest, full-text search, alphabetical expansion and per-term retrieval by id or pretty URL name, in English and Spanish, for both Patient and HealthProfessional audiences. No credential required.

NCI Glossary Term API is one of 15 APIs that Cancer.gov publishes on the APIs.io network, described by a machine-readable OpenAPI specification.

Tagged areas include Glossary, Terminology, Content, and Dictionary. The published artifact set on APIs.io includes an OpenAPI specification and API documentation.

This API exposes 8 operations across 8 paths, organized into 3 resource areas, and defines 14 schemas. It is described by OpenAPI 3.0.0, at version 1.0.0.

Requests are made against a single base URL, https://webapis.cancer.gov/glossary/v1.

8 operations 8 paths 14 schemas 8 GET

Metadata

The identity and technical contract details declared by the specification.

Specification
OpenAPI 3.0.0
API Version
1.0.0
Base URL
https://webapis.cancer.gov/glossary/v1
Resource Areas
3

Paths & Operations 8

Across 8 paths, the API surfaces 8 operations — 8 GET. They span 3 resource areas: Autosuggest, HealthCheck, Terms. Each is listed below with its method, path, parameters, and response codes.

Autosuggest 1
GET
/Autosuggest/{dictionary}/{audience}/{language}/{searchText}
Search for Terms based on autosuggest criteria
Autosuggest_GetSuggestions 6 params → 200
HealthCheck 1
GET
/HealthCheck/status
Provides an endpoint for checking that the glossary API and underlying Elasticsearch instance are in a good operational state.
HealthCheck_IsHealthy → 200
Terms 6
GET
/Terms/{dictionary}/{audience}/{language}/{id}
Retrieve the details of a Glossary Term by ID value.
Terms_GetById 5 params → 200
GET
/Terms/{dictionary}/{audience}/{language}/{prettyUrlName}
Get the Glossary Term based on Pretty URL Name.
Terms_GetByName 5 params → 200
GET
/Terms/{dictionary}/{audience}/{language}
Retrieves a portion of the overall set of glossary terms for a given combination of dictionary, audience, and language.
Terms_GetAll 6 params → 200
GET
/Terms/search/{dictionary}/{audience}/{language}/{query}
Search for Terms based on search criteria
Terms_Search 8 params → 200
GET
/Terms/expand/{dictionary}/{audience}/{language}/{character}
Get all Terms starting with the character passed.
Terms_Expand 7 params → 200
GET
/Terms/count/{dictionary}/{audience}/{language}
Get the total number of terms available in the version of a dictionary matching a specific audience and language.
Terms_GetCount 3 params → 200

Schemas 14

The contract defines 14 schemas that model the data the API accepts and returns. The most detailed are GlossaryTerm (12 properties), TermOtherLanguage (3 properties), GlossaryTermResults (3 properties), ResultsMetadata (2 properties). Each schema is shown below with its type and property counts.

Suggestion
object
Describes a single suggestion from autosuggest
2 properties
AudienceType
string
Friendly names for the specific audience a glossary term is intended for.
MatchType
string
Friendly names for the ways to perform a match.
GlossaryTerm
object
The GlossaryTerm class
12 properties
Pronunciation
object
Class representing the details required for Pronunciation
2 properties
Definition
object
AudienceType enum
2 properties
TermOtherLanguage
object
Represets a glossary term in another language
3 properties
IRelatedResource
object
Describes a GlossaryTerm's related resource.
2 properties
RelatedResourceType
integer
RelatedResourceType enum
IMedia
object
Notes a media item, type determined by the Type property.
1 property
MediaType
integer
MediaType enum
GlossaryTermResults
object
Represents the results of a glossary search operation.
3 properties
ResultsMetadata
object
Metadata about a GlossaryResults object.
2 properties
Metalink
object
Metalink
1 property

Specification

The full machine-readable OpenAPI contract behind this narrative.

Source

cancer-gov-glossary-openapi.yml Raw ↑

Other APIs Cancer.gov publishes across the network.

NCI Clinical Trials Search API
NCI Genomic Data Commons (GDC) API
NCI SEER API
NCI MoDaC API
NCI EVS Terminology API
NCI Content Syndication Services
Cancer.gov Diseases API
Cancer.gov Interventions API
Cancer.gov Terms API
Cancer.gov Trials API
NCI Drug Dictionary API
Cancer.gov Site-Wide Search API
Where this information came from

This is an independent, third-party profile of NCI Glossary Term API, published by API Evangelist. We do not operate, host, resell, or support these APIs, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by the company unless stated above. Everything here is built from publicly available information — the company's own site, developer portal, documentation, public repositories, and the specifications it publishes for public use. Nothing is obtained by breaching a system, defeating an access control, or using credentials.

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