Background
unAPI is an HTTP API for the few basic operations necessary to copy discrete, identified content from any kind of web application. Although there's general utility in having Fedora support unAPI, the real motivation is enabling the automatic capture of citation information in Zotero.
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<formats id="info:fedora/demo:1"> <format name="oai_dc" type="text/xml" docs="http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/2.0/oai_dc.xsd" /> <format name="mods" type="application/xml" docs="http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/" /> </formats> |
Fedora Implementation
Implementing the first two components of unAPI is quite straightforward. The identifier microformat for a Fedora resource would look like:
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The unAPI HTTP service is implemented as a separate web app. It's intended to be general purpose service, not bound to Fedora. The Fedora-specific implementation discussed above is provided by an implementation of an ObjectResolver interface. As a proof of concept, I also implemented an OAI-PMH resolver, designed to provide unAPI services for any application that exposes OAI-PMH
Zotero Integration
Enabling automatic citation capture in Zotero typically involves the creation of a site translator. However, translators depend on regular expression matching against a site's URL, which doesn't work for the general case of supporting any Fedora based repository. Another approach would be to embed Zotero-supported metadata in disseminations, e.g. embedding COinS in HTML renderings of Fedora objects.
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Once I added mods to my Fedora objects, browsing to the object's profile view yielded the little blue icon in my browser's location bar, indicating that Zotero could grok my Fedora object.
DSpace Integration
As mentioned above, I also implemented an OAI-PMH resolver for the unAPI HTTP service. As DSpace provides OAI-PMH services, providing Zotero support only involved the additional steps of enabling the MODS crosswalk and adding the unAPI microformat identifier and unAPI service link to display-item.jsp.
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