General Framework

Introduction

This documentation explains the features and the usage of the importer framework.
Please refer to subdivisions of this documentation for specific implementations of the framework.
 

Features

• lookup publications from remote sources
• Support for multiple implementations

Abstraction of input format

The importer framework does not enforce a specific input format. Each importer implementation defines which input format it expects from a remote source. The import framework uses generics to achieve this. Each importer implementation will have a type set of the record type it receives from the remote source's response. This type set will also be used by the framework to use the correct MetadataFieldMapping for a certain implementation. Read Implementation of an import source for more information.

Transformation to DSpace item

The framework produces an 'ImportRecord' that is completely decoupled from DSPace. It contains a set of metadata DTO's that contain the notion of schema,element and qualifier. The specific implementation is responsible for populating this set. It is then very simple to create a DSPace item from this list.

Relation with BTE

While there is some overlap between this framework and BTE, this framework supports some features that are hard to implement using the BTE. It has explicit support to deal with network failure and throttling imposed by the data source. It also has explicit support for distinguishing between network caused errors and invalid requests to the source. Furthermore the framework doesn't impose any restrictions on the format in which the data is retrieved. It uses java generics to support different source record types. A reference implementation of using XML records is provided for which a set of metadata can be generated from any xpath expression (or composite of xpath expressions). Unless 'advanced' processing is necessary (e.g. lookup of authors in an LDAP directory) this metadata mapping can be simply configured using spring. No code changes necessary. A mixture of advanced and simple (xpath) mapping is also possible.

This design is also in line with the roadmap to create a Modular Framework as detailed in https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/Design+-+Module+Framework+and+Registry This modular design also allows it to be completely independent of the user interface layer, be it JSPUI, XMLUI, command line or the result of the new UI projects: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/Design+-+Single+UI+Project

Implementation of an import source

Each importer implementation must at least implement interface org.dspace.importer.external.service.other.Imports and implement the inherited methods.

One can also choose to implement class org.dspace.importer.external.service.other.Source next to the Imports interface. This class contains functionality to handle request timeouts and to retry requests.

A third option is to implement class org.dspace.importer.external.service.AbstractImportSourceService. This class already implements both the Imports interface and Source class. AbstractImportSourceService has a generic type set 'RecordType'. In the importer implementation this type set should be the class of the records received from the remote source's response (e.g. when using axiom to get the records from the remote source's XML response, the importer implementation's type set isorg.apache.axiom.om.OMElement).

Implementing the AbstractImportSourceService allows the importer implementation to use the framework's build-in support to transform a record received from the remote source to an object of classorg.dspace.importer.external.datamodel.ImportRecord containing DSpace metadata fields, as explained here: Metadata mapping.

Inherited methods

Metadata mapping

When using an implementation of AbstractImportSourceService, a mapping of remote record fields to DSpace metadata fields can be created.

first create an implementation of class AbstractMetadataFieldMapping with the same type set used for the importer implementation.

Then create a spring configuration file in [dspace.dir]/config/spring/api.

Each DSpace metadata field that will be used for the mapping must first be configured as a spring bean of classorg.dspace.importer.external.metadatamapping.MetadataFieldConfig.

    <bean id="dc.title" class="org.dspace.importer.external.metadatamapping.MetadataFieldConfig">
        <constructor-arg value="dc.title"/>
    </bean>

Now this metadata field can be used to create a mapping. To add a mapping for the "dc.title" field declared above, a new spring bean configuration of a class class org.dspace.importer.external.metadatamapping.contributor.MetadataContributorneeds to be added. This interface contains a type argument. The type needs to match the type used in the implementation of AbstractImportSourceService. The responsibility of each MetadataContributor implementation is to generate a set of metadata from the retrieved document. How it does that is completely opaque to the AbstractImportSourceService but it is assumed that only one entity (i.e. item) is fed to the metadatum contributor.

For example java SimpleXpathMetadatumContributor implements MetadataContributor<OMElement> can parse a fragment of xml and generate one or more metadata values.

This bean expects 2 property values:

• field: A reference to the configured spring bean of the DSpace metadata field. e.g. the "dc.title" bean declared above.
• query: The xpath expression used to select the record value returned by the remote source.
  
  

    <bean id="titleContrib" class="org.dspace.importer.external.metadatamapping.contributor.SimpleXpathMetadatumContributor">
        <property name="field" ref="dc.title"/>
        <property name="query" value="dc:title"/>
    </bean>

Multiple record fields can also be combined into one value. To implement a combined mapping first create a SimpleXpathMetadatumContributor as explained above for each part of the field.

    <bean id="lastNameContrib" class="org.dspace.importer.external.metadatamapping.contributor.SimpleXpathMetadatumContributor">
        <property name="field" ref="dc.contributor.author"/>
        <property name="query" value="x:authors/x:author/x:surname"/>
    </bean>
    <bean id="firstNameContrib" class="org.dspace.importer.external.metadatamapping.contributor.SimpleXpathMetadatumContributor">
        <property name="field" ref="dc.contributor.author"/>
        <property name="query" value="x:authors/x:author/x:given-name"/>
    </bean>

Note that namespace prefixes used in the xpath queries are configured in bean "FullprefixMapping" in the same spring file.

    <util:map id="FullprefixMapping" key-type="java.lang.String" value-type="java.lang.String">
        <description>Defines the namespace mappin for the SimpleXpathMetadatum contributors</description>
        <entry key="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" value="dc"/>
        <entry key="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" value="x"/>
    </util:map>

   <util:list id="combinedauthorList" value-type="org.dspace.importer.external.metadatamapping.contributor.MetadataContributor" list-class="java.util.LinkedList">

        <ref bean="lastNameContrib"/>
        <ref bean="firstNameContrib"/>
    </util:list>

    <bean id="authorContrib" class="org.dspace.importer.external.metadatamapping.contributor.CombinedMetadatumContributor">
        <property name="separator" value=", "/>
        <property name="metadatumContributors" ref="combinedauthorList"/>
        <property name="field" ref="dc.contributor.author"/>
    </bean>

    <util:map id="org.dspace.importer.external.metadatamapping.MetadataFieldConfig"
              value-type="org.dspace.importer.external.metadatamapping.contributor.MetadataContributor">
        <entry key-ref="dc.title" value-ref="titleContrib"/>
        <entry key-ref="dc.contributor.author" value-ref="authorContrib"/>
    </util:map>