Multiple attributes available in a single OpenFDA query

Question

Can I pull a single query that counts & breaks down adverse events reported for multiple attributes such as by year and by drug and by manufacturer? I've had success pulling counts by individual (single) attributes by playing around with the Count query syntax and the Search query syntax, or a combination of both. But I've not figured out a way to retrieve the counts broken down by > 1 attribute. If I use Search query only I can get a ton of columns, but not the count. If I use the count I get 2 columns only every time.

Is what I'm asking for possible with the OpenFDA API? After looking through the examples on the OpenFDA site and on the ResearchAE site, I'm seeing where results are presented as different charts side by side rather than broken down together like I'm trying to do.

Thank you!

Answer 1

I think your question is very similar to this one: OpenFDA API : can we count on several fields? but here are some additional thoughts for you:

The short answer, as you will see in that question's answers and the asker's own edit, is that no, this is not currently possible in the openFDA API. You have to do multiple API calls which is how we* do it on ResearchAE.com. I can't speak about how they do it on the openFDA site though but if you take a screenshot or send a URL of what you're talking about I can try and dig into their site's code and let you know how they are doing it (the source code for open.fda.gov is on Github for anyone to see).

Full disclosure: my business partner and I built ResearchAE.com and presented about it and the power of the openFDA API at Health Datapalooza alongside the openFDA team.