Use esearch/efetch to output relationship table of GSM to SRR (SRA file names)

[apredeus]

Hello all,

I want to use NCBI command line utilities (esearch, efetch, etc) to achieve the following: given the GSE ID, I want a simple tab-separated output, giving you GSM experiment in column 1, and SRR file name in column 2. Ideally, it would also be collapsed by GSM ID (in cases when you have more than 1 sra file per GSM).

I'm reading through numerous pages of manuals that are relatively obscure for people without much experience with databases, so if you can help me to figure this out, I'd be most grateful

Thank you in advance!

[apredeus]

Ok I've figured it out. To get GSM to SRR relationship, you can use this:

esearch -db sra -query "GSM123456" | efetch -format docsum | xtract -pattern DocumentSummary -element Runs | perl -ne '@mt = ($_ =~ /SRR\d+/g); print "@mt\n"'`

note that it will also print multiple SRR IDs in one line (if you have more than one sra file per GSM).