Old:Dryad API

Data Access

Web Browser User Interface

Primary access to Dryad is through its web interface, where users most commonly search on authors, titles, subjects and other metadata elements. Data files may be downloaded from their Dryad Web pages.

Programmatic Data Access

In addition to the web interface, Dryad can be accessed programmatically through a sitemap or OAI-PMH interface.

Sitemaps

The Dryad sitemap will provide access to the links to all Dryad's data package and file pages, with the timestamp of their last update. It is an XML formatted file that is gzipped for transmission. An example snippet of the XML follows:

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

<url>

<loc>http://datadryad.org/handle/10255/dryad.721</loc>

<lastmod>2010-02-26T11:17:10Z</lastmod>

</url>

</urlset>

OAI-PMH

OAI-PMH is a harvesting protocol that may be used to access Dryad's metadata and data files. The specification is available, as are online tutorials, but we include a couple of examples of its use here for illustrative purposes.

Identify

Used to learn about the service

• http://www.datadryad.org/oai/request?verb=Identify

ListSets

Used to learn what sets of metadata. Dryad offers a data package set and a data file set.

• http://www.datadryad.org/oai/request?verb=ListSets

ListMetadataFormats

Used to learn what metadata formats can be returned by the service. Dryad currently offers METS/MODS, OAI-DC (Dublin Core), OAI-ORE/Atom, and RDF/DC. The amount of information mapped into each format varies. For now, we recommend using the OAI-DC metadata format.

• http://www.datadryad.org/oai/request?verb=ListMetadataFormats

ListIdentifiers

Used to list Dryad's OAI identifiers. It requires from and metadataPrefix parameters to know what range of identifiers to return and what format the metadata should be in (from the options returned by the ListMetadataFormats verb). We may modify this to return DOIs in the future.

• http://www.datadryad.org/oai/request?verb=ListIdentifiers&from=2010-01-01&&metadataPrefix=oai_dc

ListRecords

Used to list Dryad records. It requires from and metadataPrefix parameters so it knows the range of records to return. The records will be returned in the format associated with the metadataPrefix requested. Available formats can be discovered by using the ListMetadataFormats verb.

• http://www.datadryad.org/oai/request?verb=ListRecords&from=2010-01-01&metadataPrefix=oai_dc

GetRecord

Used to return a single record. It requires the OAI identifier of the record (the identifier parameter) and the format in which the record should be returned (the metadataPrefix parameter).

• http://www.datadryad.org/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&identifier=oai:datadryad.org:10255/dryad.12&metadataPrefix=oai_dc

Links to Data Packages/Files

Dryad uses DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) to identify Dryad data packages and files. A few simple examples follow. These may be resolved against the DOI resolver at http://dx.doi.org (when you do, remove the "doi:" prefix).

Data packages

• doi:10.5061/dryad.1664
• doi:10.5061/dryad.642
• doi:10.5061/dryad.1307

Data files

• doi:10.5061/dryad.1664/1
• doi:10.5061/dryad.642/1
• doi:10.5061/dryad.1307/1
• doi:10.5061/dryad.1307/2
• doi:10.5061/dryad.1307/3

RSS Feeds

There are a couple of feed options. Feeds are used by some browsers and all feed and news readers. They may also be used for programmatic access.

Everything

• http://datadryad.org/repo/feed/rss_2.0/site

Data packages only

• http://datadryad.org/repo/feed/rss_2.0/10255/3

Datasets only

• http://datadryad.org/repo/feed/rss_2.0/10255/2

Suggest Alternatives

We're interested in hearing what other forms of access people would like. If you have a suggestion for making Dryad's content more accessible, please let us know at mailto:help@datadryad.org