Create mappings from UI Internal Error

[tudor33sud]

I'm trying to create a mapping from ontoportal UI. Unfortunately, while clicking the button, I encounter the internal error.

Is there any way I can debug what's wrong? This is a fresh installation of Ontoportal 4.1.

Please let me know if I can support in any way.

Another issue that I discovered is that I cannot use the mappings API to create a mapping either. Can someone please point me to some API reference / docs to understand if I'm doing something wrong?

Thanks a lot for your support!

[jvendetti]

I'm trying to create a mapping from ontoportal UI. Unfortunately, while clicking the button, I encounter the internal error.

This is a known issue with the Create New Mapping button, documented here: ncbo/bioportal_web_ui#476. We're maintaining BioPortal with limited resources and hadn't prioritized fixing this yet due to low demand for manual mapping creation. I'll see if I can get this moved up in our to-do list.

Another issue that I discovered is that I cannot use the mappings API to create a mapping either.

Here's a curl command that demonstrates mapping creation (apikey token removed - you'd need to plug your own API key in here). I tested this in our production environment today and it's working well:

~ curl -i -X POST 'https://data.bioontology.org/mappings' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Authorization: apikey token=xxx' \
  -d '{
    "classes": {
      "http://www.co-ode.org/ontologies/pizza/pizza.owl#Pizza": "TESTONTJV",
      "http://www.co-ode.org/ontologies/pizza/pizza.owl#CheeseyPizza": "JVTESTONT1"
    },
    "relation": "http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#exactMatch",
    "creator": "vendetti",
    "comment": "Test mapping created with curl"
  }'

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Server: nginx/1.28.1
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2026 23:04:11 GMT
Content-Type: application/json;charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 5463
Connection: keep-alive
X-Rack-Cache: invalidate, pass
Vary: Origin
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff

Let me get back to you about some of the fields you were trying to fill out, e.g., source_contact_info. I don't think our code handles population of those fields yet.

[jvendetti]

Following up after looking at the mappings code. You can pass the source_name parameter, but there's an issue where the source_contact_info is ignored — I've documented in this ticket: ncbo/ontologies_api#206.

If you continue to have issues with creating mappings, you can check the application log files for stack traces. The REST logs are in the ontologies_api directory.

ubuntu@localhost:~$ sudo -i
root@localhost:~# cd /var/log/ontoportal/
root@localhost:/var/log/ontoportal# ll
total 8
drwxr-xr-x  5 op-admin   opdata   55 Sep 13  2025 ./
drwxr-xr-x 17 root       root   4096 Mar 18 21:52 ../
drwxr-x---  2 op-backend opdata 4096 Mar  6 23:04 ncbo_cron/
drwxrwx---  2 op-backend opdata  188 Mar 18 21:58 ontologies_api/
drwxrwx---  2 op-ui      op-ui    73 Mar 18 22:11 ui/