Bugfix

The SeerApi builder methods were changed from package private to public.

NDC API

The NDC API was recently added to SEER*API and it is now supported in the library. The API can lookup drugs by code or search on drugs. See the following for API details:

Lookup drug by code
Search drugs

Retrofit update

This release migrates to the 2.0 release of Retrofit. This is a pretty large change to the API, but will allow more advanced uses cases in the future, like HATEOAS support. All API calls now return a Call object. Previously a call looked like:

StagingSchema schema = api.staging().schemaById("cs", "02.05.50", "brain");

Now it will look like this:

Call<StagingSchema> call = api.staging().schemaById("cs", "02.05.50", "brain");
call.execute();
StagingSchema schema = call.body();

or it can be simplified into a single line

StagingSchema schema = api.staging().schemaById("cs", "02.05.50", "brain").execute().body();

If there is a non-200 return value then an exception will be thrown (i.e. NotAuthorizedException, 'NotFoundException,BadRequestException`, etc).

Minimized dependencies

• Issue #6: Removed Glassfish dependency and replaced with Retrofit. This greatly lowers the amount of extra dependencies required to use the library.
• Added new Glossary fields to match API changes.
• The minimum JDK required to use the library is now Java 7.

Fluent interface

The initialization of a SeerApi object is now accomplished with a SeerApiBuilder.

To use the default URL and key stored in a local properties file:

SeerApi api = new SeerApiBuilder().connect();
StagingSchema schema = api.stagingSchemaById("cs", "02.05.50", "brain");

Or the URL and key can be specified:

SeerApi api = new SeerApiBuilder().url("api_url")
                                  .apiKey("your_api_key")
                                  .connect();
StagingSchema schema = api.stagingSchemaById("cs", "02.05.50", "brain");

Updates to changelogs

• The changelog APIs for Disease, Glossary and Rx were updated to match changes to SEER*API.
• The legacy "cstage" API was removed from the library as it no longer exists in SEER*API. The "staging" API replaces it.

New disease fields

• 4 new fields were added to Disease
  • primary_site_text
  • transform_from_text
  • transform_to_text
  • same_primaries_text
• Additional updates to the staging API. The API is still not available yet.

Staging API

This release includes an early version of the staging API. This is still being beta tested and is not yet available for the general public.

Offsets in searching

The library was updated to work with the latest changes in the the Disease (/rest/disease/:version) and glossary (/rest/glossary/:version) search APIs. If you use the search API you will most likely need to make changes to your code.

• The number of results returned in a single call is now limited by the "count" parameter. If "count" is not specified, 25 results will be returned. Up to 100 results can be returned in a single API call.
• An "offset" parameter was added. This allows results to be "paged" and returned in chunks.
• The "count-only" parameter was removed. This is no longer needed since all search results now include a "total" field which represents the total number of results regardless of "count" and "offset".

SEER*Rx and Surgery

Two additional sets of APIs are supported with this release.

• SEER*Rx APIs (/rest/rx) were added. It represents a lookup for coding oncology drug and regimen treatment categories in cancer registries
• SEER Surgery APIs (/rest/surgery) were added. These APIs allow programmatic access to SEER Site-Specific Surgery Codes. The data comes from Appendix C on the SEER website.