Data and help

Scripts, instruments and other tools

Read and write your lab's data from scripts, R and instruments.

BioManager has an API: other programs can read the lab's records, and change them, as you. Pull an experiment's body weights straight into R or Python, have a balance post each weight as it weighs, let a core's system mark samples as done, or count cages for the facility — without anyone exporting a sheet.

1. Settings → API tokens: say what will use it (Balance in B12, My R scripts), whether it may Read or Read and change, and when it ends. Make a token.
2. Copy the token: it is shown once. Treat it like your password, and keep it out of scripts you share (an environment variable is the usual place).
3. Send it with each request, as Authorization: Bearer bmt_…. The API reference (the link on the same card, or /api on your BioManager) lists everything it can read and change, with examples in curl, Python and R.

• A token is you. It can do what you can on the pages, no more; a change made with it is in the change history under your name, marked with the token's name.
• It can read mice, cages, litters, strains, tanks and fish, plasmids, fly and worm vials, every inventory and every experiment; and change a mouse (its cage, genotype, note, status…), record a weight, change a vial, add or change an inventory item, and record an experiment's readout.
• Make one token for each thing that uses it, so you can Revoke one without the others. The card shows when each was last used. Admins see everyone's tokens and can revoke any; Setup can keep tokens to admins.
• With the desktop app, only programs on that computer can reach it; on a lab server, anything that can reach the server.