discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Adam Fisk <afisk AT speedymail.org>]

Great you guys are working on this Nathan -- precisely the right path in 
my view.  I'll fire it up in the not-to-distant future (well, maybe 
somewhat distant due to time constraints), but I'll let you know what I 
think.

All the best,

-Adam


Nathan R. Yergler wrote:

> The initial version of our SOAP API for licensing is now available.  
> The SOAP API has the following goals:
>
> * Provide a web services interface to the CC licensing engine
> * Allow 3rd party developers to easily integrate CC licensing into 
> their applications, regardless of UI
>
> The API is rooted at http://api.creativecommons.org/soap, and defines 
> the following methods:
>
> licenses()
>   Returns a list of license class identifiers (currently standard, 
> publicdomain; gpl, lgpl, recombo will be added)
>
> fields(license)
>   Returns a list of field identifiers for a particular license class; 
> fields are values which must be supplied in order to issue a license
>
> fieldDetail(license, field_id, lang='en')
>   Returns a sequence of two-tuples which form a detail mapping for the 
> particular field.  Keys include id, label, description and type.
>
> fieldEnum(license, field_id, lang='en')
>   For fields with type=='enum', returns a mapping of id/label pairs
>
> getLicense(license, answers)
>   Returns an XML document containing the license URL and license RDF; 
> license is the license class ID and answers is a mapping (dictionary) 
> with field identifiers as the keys.
>
> Sample code is available in soap-client.py, available from SourceForge 
> CVS (http://http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/cctools/) in the api 
> module.
>
> The following questions still need to be answered:
>
> * How to handle work information, which should be integrated into the 
> returned license RDF (always add the keys to the field list?  seperate 
> function to get the work info fields and return them in an additional, 
> optional parameter to getLicense?)
> * Exceptions are currently poorly defined and hence relatively useless
>
> Note that the API may (and probably will) change in the future as we 
> receive feedback and developers begin using the API.  We will be using 
> the API internally at CC for our ccTag application.  We expect this 
> "real world" usage experience will reveal possible faults in the 
> current design.  Your suggestions, comments and questions are welcome.
>
> We will also be developing a more REST-ful API, which should be 
> available for testing shortly, as well.
>
> Thanks for your help,
>
> Nathan R. Yergler
> Software Engineer
> Creative Commons
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