License Validation Web Application

Nathan R. Yergler nathan at yergler.net
Thu Oct 16 09:00:36 EDT 2003


In response to the "technology challenges" posted by the Creative 
Commons, I've spent the past week hacking together a License Validation 
Web Application.  It currently accepts either a block of pasted-in RDF 
or a URL.  In the case of a URL, it retrieves the document and extracts 
any blocks of RDF it finds using a simple regex.

You can find the validator at 
http://www.yergler.net/projects/ccvalidator.  Development "news" can be 
found at http://www.yergler.net/averages/archives/ccvalidator.  As part 
of it's development I also put together a Python class which wraps CC 
licenses; I'll be posting that in the near future.

Currently there are a couple of areas for improvment.  First, it runs as 
a stupid CGI, which means the output is hard-coded into the script with 
print statements.  This was obviously done just for proof-of-concept, so 
any suggestions on templating or CGI helper modules would be 
appreciated.  Second, it's a little silly with the way it handles nested 
"objects", such as an Agent as the dc:author property of a work.  It 
displays most of the information correctly, but probably could be improved.

I'd love to hear any feedback, suggestions or ideas.  If you find a 
problem, please send a test case (ie, the RDF or URL) which breaks it, 
so I can get that fixed.

Nathan R. Yergler





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