Site Information and Request Forwarding Services

Services in this section provide information about the site (eg. name, users, groups, schemas etc) and access to the site forwarding service which can be used by JavaScript clients.

Site Information (xml.info)

This service can be used to retrieve information about a GeoNetwork site. The information that can be requested includes: site name and id, users, groups, metadata schemas as well as lists of privileges, metadata status values, spatial regions, local metadata categories and so on.

Request

The XML request should contain at least one type parameter to indicate the kind of information to retrieve. Multiple type parameters can be specified. The set of allowed values is:

site: Returns general information about the site like its name, id, etc...
users: Depending upon the profile of the user making the call, information about users of the site will be returned. The rules are:
Administrators can see all users
User administrators can see all users they administer and all other user administrators in the same group set. The group set is defined by all groups visible to the user administrator (except for the All and Intranet groups).
An authenticated user can only see their own information.
A guest cannot see any user information at all.
groups: Returns all user groups visible to the requesting user. Note: If the user is not authenticated, only the Intranet and All groups will be returned.
sources: Returns all GeoNetwork sources (remote sites) that are known about at the site. This will include:
Node name and siteId
All source UUIDs and site names that have been discovered through harvesting
All source UUIDs and site names from MEF files imported by the site
schemas: Returns all registered metadata schemas for the site
categories: Returns the metadata categories for the site
operations: Returns all possible operations on metadata
regions: Returns all geographical regions usable for spatial queries
status: Returns all possible status values for metadata records

Request example:

<request>
    <type>site</type>
    <type>groups</type>
</request>

Response

Each type parameter produces an XML subtree in an info container element. An example response to a request for site, categories and groups information would look like the following:

<info>
    <site>...</site>
    <categories>...</categories>
    <groups>...</groups>
</info>

The structure of each possible subtree is as follows:

Site

site: This is the container for site information
- name: Human readable site name
- siteId: Universal unique identifier (uuid) of the site
- platform: Container for GeoNetwork development version information
  - name: Platform name. Always geonetwork.
  - version: Platform version, given in the X.Y.Z format
  - subVersion: Additional version notes, like 'alpha-1' or 'beta-2'.

Example site information:

<site>
    <name>My site</name>
    <organisation>FAO</organization>
    <siteId>0619cc50-708b-11da-8202-000d9335906e</siteId>
    <platform>
        <name>geonetwork</name>
        <version>2.2.0</version>
    </platform>
</site>

Users

users: This is the container for user information
- user [0..n]: A user of the system
  - id: The local identifier of the user
  - username: The login name
  - surname: The user's surname. Used for display purposes.
  - name: The user's name. Used for display purposes.
  - profile: User's profile. eg. Administrator, Editor, UserAdmin etc...
  - address: The user's address.
  - state: The user's state.
  - zip: The user's address zip/postal code.
  - country: The user's country.
  - email: The user's email address.
  - organisation: The user's organisation.
  - kind: The type of organisation (eg. NGO, Government)

Example response:

<users>
    <user>
        <id>3</id>
        <username>eddi</username>
        <surname>Smith</surname>
        <name>John</name>
        <profile>Editor</profile>
        <address/>
        <state/>
        <zip/>
        <country/>
        <email/>
        <organisation/>
        <kind>gov</kind>
    </user>
</users>

Groups

groups: This is the container for groups
- group [2..n]: This is a GeoNetwork group. There will always be at least two groups: the Internet and Intranet groups. This element has an id attribute which represents the local identifier for the group.
  - name: Group name
  - description: Group description
  - referrer: The user responsible for this group
  - email: The email address to notify when a data file uploaded with the metadata is downloaded
  - label: The localised labels used to show the group in the user interface. See Localised entities.

Example response:

<groups>
    <group id="1">
        <name>editors</name>
        <label>
            <eng>Editors</eng>
            <fre>Éditeurs</fre>
        </label>
    </group>
</groups>

Sources

sources: This is the container for sources.
- source [0..n]: A source known to the GeoNetwork node.
  - name: Source name
  - UUID: Source universal unique identifier

Example response for a source:

<sources>
    <source>
        <name>My Host</name>
        <UUID>0619cc50-708b-11da-8202-000d9335906e</uuid>
    </source>
</sources>

Schemas

schemas: This is the container for the schema information
- schema [0..n]: A metadata schema.
  - name - the name of the schema - this is the name by which the schema is known to GeoNetwork. It is also the name of the directory in GEONETWORK_DATA_DIR/config/schema_plugins under which the schema can be found.
  - id - A unique identifier assigned to the schema in the schema-ident.xml file.
  - version - a version string assigned to the schema in the schema-ident.xml file.
  - namespaces - namespaces used by the metadata schema and records that belong to that schema. This is a string suitable for use as a namespace definition in an XML file.
  - edit - if true then records that use this schema can be edited by GeoNetwork, if false then they can't.
  - conversions - information about the GeoNetwork services that can be called to convert metadata that use this schema into other XML formats. If there are valid conversions registered for this schema then this element will have a converter child for each one of these conversions. Each converter child has the following attributes which are intended to be used when searching for a particular format that may be produced by a conversion:
    - name - the name of the GeoNetwork service that invokes the converter
    - nsUri - the namespace URI of the XML produced by the conversion
    - schemaLocation - the schema location (URL) of the namespace URI
    - xslt - the name of the XSLT in the plugin schema convert subdirectory that is invoked by the GeoNetwork service to carry out the conversion.

Example response for schemas:

<schemas>
 <schema>
   <name>iso19139</name>
   <id>3f95190a-dde4-11df-8626-001c2346de4c</id>
   <version>1.0</version>
   <namespaces>xmlns:gts="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gts" xmlns:gmx="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gmx" xmlns:gco="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gco" xmlns:srv="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/srv" xmlns:gss="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gss" xmlns:gml="http://www.opengis.net/gml" xmlns:gsr="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gsr" xmlns:gmd="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gmd" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"</namespaces>
   <convertDirectory>/usr/local/src/git/geonetwork-2.8.x/web/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/data/config/schema_plugins/iso19139/convert/</convertDirectory>
   <edit>true</edit>
   <conversions>
     <converter name="xml_iso19139" nsUri="http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gmd" schemaLocation="www.isotc211.org/2005/gmd/gmd.xsd" xslt="" />
     <converter name="xml_iso19139Tooai_dc" nsUri="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/" schemaLocation="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc.xsd" xslt="oai_dc.xsl" />
   </conversions>
 </schema> 
 ...
</schemas>

Looking at the example schema (iso19139) above, there are two converters. The first is invoked by calling the GeoNetwork service xml_iso19139 (eg. http://somehost/geonetwork/srv/eng/xml_iso19139?uuid=<uuid of metadata>). It produces an XML format with namespace URI http://www.isotc211.org/gmd with schemaLocation http://www.isotc211.org/2005/gmd/gmd.xsd and xslt name xml_iso19139 because the xslt attribute is set to the empty string.

Operations

operations: This is the container for the operations
- operation [0..n]: This is a possible operation on a metadata record. This element has an id attribute which represents the local identifier for the operation.
  - name: Short name for the operation.
  - reserved: Can be y or n and is used to distinguish between system reserved and user defined operations.
  - label: The localised labels used to show the operation in the user interface. See Localised entities.

Example response for operations:

<operations>
    <operation id="0">
        <name>view</name>
        <label>
            <eng>View</eng>
            <fre>Voir</fre>
        </label>
    </operation>
</operations>

Regions

regions: This is the container for geographical regions
- region [0..n]: This is a region container element. This element has an id attribute which represents the local identifier for the operation.
  - north: North coordinate of the bounding box.
  - south: South coordinate of the bounding box.
  - west: West coordinate of the bounding box.
  - east: east coordinate of the bounding box.
  - label: The localised labels used to show the region in the user interface. See Localised entities.

Example response for regions:

<regions>
    <region id="303">
        <north>82.99</north>
        <south>26.92</south>
        <west>-37.32</west>
        <east>39.24</east>
        <label>
            <eng>Western Europe</eng>
        </label>
    </region>
</regions>

Status

statusvalues: This is the container for the metadata status value information.
- status [0..n]: A metadata status value. This element has an id attribute which represents the local identifier of the status value.
  - name: The status value name
  - reserved: Can be y or n and is used to distinguish between system reserved and user defined status values.
  - label: The localised labels used to show the status value in the user interface. See Localised entities.

Example response for status:

<statusvalues>
  <status id="0">
    <name>unknown</name>
    <reserved>y</reserved>
    <label>
      <eng>Unknown</eng>
    </label>
  </status>
  ...
</statusvalues>

z3950repositories

z3950repositories: This is the container for the Z3950 repositories that have been configured for this site.
- repository [0..n]: A Z3950 Repository container.
  - id: The repository id. This should be used when referring to the repository in GeoNetwork services (eg. xml.harvest.* services - see Harvesting services).
  - label: The human readable name for the repository.

Example response for z3950repositories:

<z3950repositories>
  <repository>
    <id code="act" serverCode="cbb945ec-36ea-11df-9735-ebfc367b61a6">act</id>
    <label>ACT Geographic Data Directory</label>
  </repository>
  .....
</z3950repositories>

Localised entities

Localised entities in the responses from this service have a label element which contains localised strings in all supported languages. This element has a child for each supported language. Each child has a name reflecting the language code and content set to the localised text. Example:

<label>
    <eng>Editors</eng>
    <fre>Éditeurs</fre>
    <esp>Editores</esp>
</label>

Request Forwarding (xml.forward)

This is a request forwarding service. It can be used by JavaScript code to connect to a remote host because a JavaScript program cannot access any machine other than its server (the same origin policy, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same_origin_policy). For example, it is used by the harvesting web interface to query a remote host and retrieve the list of site ids.

Request

The details of the request:

<request>
    <site>
        <url>...</url>
        <type>...</type>
        <account>
            <username>...</username>
            <password>...</password>
        </account>
    </site>
    <params>...</params>
</request>

Where:

site: A container for site information where the request will be forwarded.
url: Refers to the remote URL to connect to. Usually it points to a GeoNetwork XML service but it can point to any XML service.
type: If set to GeoNetwork then use GeoNetwork authentication schema. Any other value, or if the element is missing, refers to a generic node.
account: This element is optional. If present, the provided credentials will be used to authenticate to the remote site.
params: Container for the request parameters.

Request for info from a remote server:

<request>
    <site>
        <url>http://mynode.org:8080/geonetwork/srv/eng/xml.info</url>
    </site>
    <params>
        <request>
            <type>site<type>
        </request>
    </params>
</request>

Note

This service uses the proxy configuration. See System Configuration section of the user manual.

Response

Response from the remote service.

Site Information and Request Forwarding Services

Site Information (xml.info)

Request

Response

Site

Users

Groups

Sources

Schemas

Categories

Operations

Regions

Status

z3950repositories

Localised entities

Request Forwarding (xml.forward)

Request

Response