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WEBDAV Harvesting

This harvesting type uses the WebDAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning) protocol or the WAF (web accessible folder) protocol to harvest metadata from a web server. It can be useful to users that want to publish their metadata through a web server that offers a DAV interface. The protocol permits retrieval of the contents of a web page (a list of files) along with the change date.

Adding a WebDAV harvester

To create a WebDAV harvester go to Admin console > Harvesting and select Harvest from > WebDAV / WAF:

Providing the following information:

  • Identification

    • Node name and logo: A unique name for the harvester and, optionally, a logo to assign to the harvester.
    • Group: Group which owns the harvested records. Only the catalog administrator or users with the profile UserAdmin of this group can manage the harvester.
    • User: User who owns the harvested records.

  • Schedule: Scheduling options to execute the harvester. If disabled, the harvester must be run manually from the harvester page. If enabled, a scheduling expression using cron syntax should be configured (See examples).

  • Configure connection to WebDAV / WAF

    • URL: The remote URL from which metadata will be harvested. Each file found that has the extension .xml is assumed to be a metadata record.
    • Type of protocol: Select WebDAV or WAF according to the type of server being harvested.
    • Remote authentication: If checked, should be provided the credentials for basic HTTP authentication on the WebDAV/WAF server.
    • Also search in subfolders: When the harvesting engine will find folders, it will recursively descend into them.

  • Configure response processing for webdav

    • Action on UUID collision: When a harvester finds the same uuid on a record collected by another method (another harvester, importer, dashboard editor,...), should this record be skipped (default), overriden or generate a new UUID?

    • XSL filter name to apply: (Optional) The XSL filter is applied to each metadata record. The filter is a process which depends on the schema (see the process folder of the schemas).

      It could be composed of parameter which will be sent to XSL transformation using the following syntax: anonymizer?protocol=MYLOCALNETWORK:FILEPATH&email=gis@organisation.org&thesaurus=MYORGONLYTHEASURUS

    • Validate records before import: Defines the criteria to reject metadata that is invalid according to XML structure (XSD) and validation rules (schematron).

      • Accept all metadata without validation.
      • Accept metadata that are XSD valid.
      • Accept metadata that are XSD and schematron valid.
    • Category: (Optional) A GeoNetwork category to assign to each metadata record.

  • Privileges - Assign privileges to harvested metadata.