help.txt

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! Developer note: 
! This help html message is contained in the file help.txt 
! You can adapt it to your institution/dataset
! If you are looking for a manual user interface for the beacon,
! have a look at the file index.html

A Genomics Alliance Beacon, see http://ga4gh.org/#/beacon

* REST endpoint cgi-bin/beacon/query:

  parameters:
  - chromosome: 1 - 22, X, Y or M
  - allele: A,C,T,G or I<seq> or D<length>. 
  - position: 0-based position on chromosome
  - dataset: optional. If not specified all datasets will be queried.
  - reference: optional. If specified, has to be GRCh37
  - format: if "text",  does not return JSON, but just one of the words "true",
        or "false".  Easier to parse for shell scripts.

* REST endpoint cgi-bin/beacon/info:
  shows info about beacon, e.g. number of variants served.
  no parameters

Examples:
query?dataset=test&chromosome=1&position=10150&allele=A
query?dataset=test&chromosome=1&position=10150&allele=A&format=text
query?dataset=test&chromosome=1&position=4772339&allele=T
- returns "true", this allele is in the beacon

query?dataset=test&chromosome=1&position=1234&allele=T
- returns "false", this allele is not in the beacon

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