[sword-app-tech] URI in SWORD Post Responses

[Tim D. <tdo...@il...>]

All,

I'm been working on updating the Ruby SWORD client that I built for
Bibapp software (www.bibapp.org).  With BibApp, we want to be able to
send files+metadata to a repository via SWORD, and maintain a link (in
BibApp) to the "final resting place" of that item in the repository.
The end result is that BibApp just has a link to the item(s) after it
has successfully posted them to one or more repositories.

So, for us, the *response* we receive from the SWORD server after a
successful POST is important.  Unfortunately, it seems that there's
little-to-no standardization around returning URI information in the
response from DSpace, EPrints and Fedora.

Based on the Atom PP Spec, it looks like it's recommended that an
item's URI (or IRI, more appropriately) should be returned in <atom:link
rel="edit"> in the response. [1]

However, the SWORD server implementations don't seem to consistently
follow this recommendation.  Here's what I'm seeing as responses from
DSpace, Fedora and Eprints respectively:


=======================
DSpace 1.5.1 SWORD Response:
(URI is in <atom:id>,
"rel" attribute not even used on <atom:link>)
=======================

<atom:entry>
   <atom:id>http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/5023</atom:id>
   ...
   <atom:link
href="http://lakshmi.grainger.uiuc.edu/ideals//bitstream/123456789/5023/1/pdf1.pdf"/>
   ...
</atom:entry>


=======================
Fedora SWORD Response:
(URI is in <atom:link rel="edit">)
=======================

<atom:entry>
   <atom:id>sword:151</atom:id>
   ...
   <atom:link
href="http://glen.dnsalias.org:8080/fedora/get/sword:151/ServletClient-7"
    rel="edit-media" hreflang="en"/>
   <atom:link href="http://glen.dnsalias.org:8080/fedora/get/sword:151"
    rel="edit" hreflang="en"/>
   ...
</atom:entry>


=======================
EPrints SWORD Response:
(URI is in <atom:link rel="edit-metadata"> ?)
=======================

<atom:entry>
   <atom:id>2328</atom:id>
   ...
   <atom:link
href="http://demoprints.eprints.org/sword-app/collections/2328"
    rel="edit-media"/>
   <atom:link
href="http://demoprints.eprints.org/sword-app/collections/2328.atom"
    rel="edit"/>
   ...
</atom:entry>


Overall, Fedora looks to have the most "correct" implementation. EPrints
seems to be using rel="edit-metadata", and DSpace uses <atom:id>.   Is
there any work being done to make recommendations around how to
appropriately structure these responses from a SWORD server?  Maybe I
missed something in SWORD 1.3 dealing with this?

Any recommendations/suggestions from any of the SWORD experts out there? :)


References:

[1] Atom Publishing Protocol Spec, on the "edit" link relation:
http://www.atomenabled.org/developers/protocol/atom-protocol-spec.php#atom-entry-extensions


- Tim

-- 
Tim Donohue
Research Programmer, IDEALS
http://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/
University of Illinois
tdo...@il... | (217) 333-4648