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A content providers guide to OPDS Servers in SimplyE
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OPDS stands stands for Open Publication Distribution System. This protocol is based on the ATOM syndication standard and is used to communicate via the world wide web a catalog of books and their related metadata resources. An OPDS server is simply an application server or a file server that hosts and publishes an XML document that conforms to the OPDS protocol. Client applications like RSS readers or the SimplyE applications interpret these documents to display catalogs of content, transact with resource providers and download books. This creates a highly scalable highly interoperable ecosystem from content distribution.
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- The New York Public Library
- The Brooklyn Public Library
- [Canadian Electronic Library
- http://www.canadianelectroniclibrary.ca/][The Internet Archivehttps
- ://archive.org/][
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Some organizations that publish (or could publish) OPDS feeds but won't show up in the library registry because they don't deal directly with individuals:
- [Plympton
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Do you allow anonymous access? Some OPDS servers are open for anonymous access by the general public. Others restrict access to people with a user account. It may be easy or difficult to get a user account; the distinction here is whether a user account is required at all.
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To see the problem here, consider a specific case. I come to your site and say "I'm a patron of library X; give me this book." You've agreed to hand out copies of this book to patrons of library X, but how do you know I'm really a patron of library X? Am I supposed to show you my library card? How do you know it's legitimate?
When you set up the contract with library X, you sent out a username and password for that library to use when accessing your OPDS server. If I, the patron, had that username and password, I could access your OPDS server and download the book. But I shouldn't be given that username and password. I'm not library X, I'm just a patron of library X.
Library X shouldn't have to give out its credentials to every patron who asks. It should be able to delegate its authority to a patron for purposes of downloading a specific book from your server. This is what bearer token propagation is for, and it's covered in a separate document.