Introducing Galaxy servers

Galaxy (https://galaxyproject.org/tutorials/g101/) is an open source system that empowers non-computational users to do computational biology. It is the most widely used, user-friendly pipeline system available. Galaxy can be installed on a server by any user, but there are also plenty of other servers on the web with public access, the flagship being http://usegalaxy.org.

Our focus in the following recipes will be the programming side of Galaxy: interfacing using the Galaxy API, and developing a Galaxy tool to extend its functionality. Before we start, you are strongly advised to approach Galaxy as a user. You can do this by creating a free account on http://usegalaxy.org, and playing around with it a bit. Getting a level of understanding that includes workflows is recommended.

Getting ready

In this recipe, we will carry out a local installation of a Galaxy server using Docker. As such, a local Docker installation is required. This will vary in complexity across...