Quick work Jim!
I'd love to do this too, but there are a couple of related issues to
deal with first. We've still not got a single place to go to on our site
to search all our collections data (by which I mean all of the stuff
that's already scattered around elsewhere - perhaps 50k items - as
opposed to all our colllections data, which entails politics and stuff),
and I'm not sure when this will happen in terms of a web UI. Also, for
historic reasons there are two databases that still need combining, both
holding subsets of the collections data we have online. I could rapidly
do this for one of those datasets even before we combine them, though,
and most likely as Seb says a few hours' work would get us most of the
way there. That's been the plan, anyway - I'm aiming at a REST interface
for our publications data, events, and collections. The former 2 are
pretty easy (though one could dither over the metadata formats forever),
but the question of collections data is more complex and I'd been unsure
of the appropriate format for the output, so this model is very useful
in that regard. So whilst a unified access point for our website
visitors may be some way off, a programmatic interface to the data could
come along much more quickly. Time constraints permitting!
Jeremy
Jeremy Ottevanger
Web Developer, Museum Systems Team
Museum of London Group
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London. N1 7ED
Tel: 020 7410 2207
Fax: 020 7600 1058
Email: [log in to unmask]
www.museumoflondon.org.uk
Museum of London is changing; our lower galleries will be closed while they undergo a major new development. Visit www.museumoflondon.org.uk to find out more.
London's Burning - explore how the Great Fire of London shaped the city we see today www.museumoflondon.org.uk/londonsburning
Before printing, please think about the environment
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Jim O'Donnell
Sent: 11 April 2008 12:17
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MCG] OpenSearch and RSS at the National Maritime Museum
Thanks for that Jeremy,
Startrow was marked as optional in our opensearch description, but
required by the RSS template. I've fixed that bug. Also, in response to
Frankie's suggestion, I've added dc:type for type of object (painting,
grommet, model etc.) and dc:subject for the name of the collection (Fine
Art, Bedford Lemere, Atlantic Worlds etc.) There doesn't seem to be much
out there by way of guidance on DC for collections records, so I'm
following PNDS and suggestions from a hardcopy of a 2001 report by CIMI,
which has tons of examples of records in DC but doesn't seem to be
available online any more.
Following up on what Seb said, this is not particularly difficult to set
up. I've tried to design our collections system so that the bits that do
the searching are completely separate from the views that list the
object records, so that I can output the results as HTML, JSON or XML as
need be. A little more about that here
http://eatyourgreens.org.uk/archives/2007/11/how_to_make_aja.html
By the way, JSON is way, way easier to publish than XML when you have
descriptions like ours :)
After reading Mike Ellis's blog post
(http://electronicmuseum.org.uk/2008/04/01/rss-search-results/) I had a
non-validating, badly formed XML feed up in about 15 minutes. There was
about another two days reading this week to figure out what is and isn't
legal in XML leading to the current version, which should work in even
the strictest RSS readers. http://feedvalidator.org was invaluable for
sorting out RSS errors. I also discovered along the way that it's really
easy to publish a feed which isn't proper RSS - in our case mostly by
including accented characters or punctuation from Word documents.
As Seb said, the really interesting thing is that we've opened up the
summary metadata for our objects with very little work on our part.
Cheers
Jim
Jim O'Donnell
Senior Web Developer
National Maritime Museum
Park Row
Greenwich
London SE10 9NF
DDI: 020 8312 6517
Fax:
email: [log in to unmask]
P please consider the environment - do you really need to print this
email?
We are listed on everyclick.com, the search engine that helps charity.
Please go to http://www.everyclick.com/uk/nationalmaritimemuseum and set
everyclick as your home page, so you can search the web and help
National Maritime Museum. It does not cost a penny, so it's a great way
to support us every day.
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>Ottevanger, Jeremy
>Sent: 11 April 2008 11:51
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: OpenSearch and RSS at the National Maritime Museum
>
>Great work, Jim. Time for us to follow (yet again).
>
>I get an error, though:
>********************
>Internet Explorer cannot display this feed
>
> This feed contains code errors.
> Go back to the previous page.
>
> More information
>
>The following tags were not closed: rss, channel.
> Line: 0 Character: 0
>
>*********************
>http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/requestHandlers/doQuickSearch.
>cfm?searc
>hterm=midshipman&startrow=&format=rss
>
>
>Looking in Mozilla and checking the source, it looks like an error is
>stopping the feed from being written completely before it's flushed:
>
><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
>
><rss version="2.0"
>xmlns:openSearch="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"
>xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
>xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
>xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">
> <channel>
> <title>midshipman - National Maritime Museum Collections
>Online</title>
>
><link>http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/requestHandlers/doQuickS
>earch.cfm
>?searchterm=midshipman&authority=category&category=&
>;startrow
>=</link>
> <description><![CDATA[]]></description>
> <copyright>National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London</copyright>
>
> <atom:link
>href="http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/requestHandlers/doQuickS
>earch.cfm
>?searchterm=midshipman&authority=category&category=&
>;startrow
>=&format=rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
> <openSearch:totalResults>132</openSearch:totalResults>
> <openSearch:startIndex></openSearch:startIndex>
> <openSearch:itemsPerPage>20</openSearch:itemsPerPage>
> The value "" cannot be converted to a number
>
>
>....and that's it. Hence IE's error. Turns out that it's because the
>value for statrow is missing from the URL - putting "1" in there fixed
>it.
>
>
>I'm trying to figure out just how much value of the OpenSearch part
>would offer us(as with many sites, most of our pages have a site-wide
>search box anyway), but your use of it for collections-specific search
>is a possible answer. And the other thing, of course, is that the
>really cool thing you've done is the RSS part, not the OpenSearch part
>- likewise Perry's work in Bolton. Your data is now out in the wild.
>You've taken a sensible approach to structuring your data, mixing DC
>and RSS, and it looks like a good model to follow. Now let's see the
>mashups!
>
>Cheers, Jeremy
>
>
>
>
>Jeremy Ottevanger
>Web Developer, Museum Systems Team
>Museum of London Group
>46 Eagle Wharf Road
>London. N1 7ED
>Tel: 020 7410 2207
>Fax: 020 7600 1058
>Email: [log in to unmask] www.museumoflondon.org.uk
>Museum of London is changing; our lower galleries will be closed while
>they undergo a major new development. Visit www.museumoflondon.org.uk
>to find out more.
>London's Burning - explore how the Great Fire of London shaped the city
>we see today www.museumoflondon.org.uk/londonsburning
>Before printing, please think about the environment
>
>
>
This message has been scanned for malware by WebSense Mailcontrol for
the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit
the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
**************************************************
**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
**************************************************
|