Data Access
Contents
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
ListSets
- Used to learn what sets of metadata. Dryad offers a data package set and a data file set.
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.
ListIdentifiers
- Used to list Dryad's OAI identifiers. It requires
from
andmetadataPrefix
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.ListRecords
- Used to list Dryad records. It requires
from
andmetadataPrefix
parameters so it knows the range of records to return. The records will be returned in the format associated with themetadataPrefix
requested. Available formats can be discovered by using the ListMetadataFormats verb.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 (themetadataPrefix
parameter).
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
Data files
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
Data packages only
Datasets only
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