Metadata identifier templates

Date	14 September 2015	Contacts	Jose García
Status	Motion passed - Done	Release	3.0.3
Resources		Ticket #	#1189
Source code	PR 1190
Funding	Met Office

Overview

Some organisations require to define the metadata identifiers using URN templates. This feature allows to customise the behaviour of GeoNetwork when creating new metadata:

Create a random UUID. This is the "standard" behaviour of GeoNetwork and it's set as default.
Use metadata URN templates to define the metadata identifiers. This option allows the user to enter a metadata identifier from the metadata URN templates defined by an administrator user.

To enable the usage of metadata URN templates for the metadata identifiers, the user should disable the following setting:

Setting to use custom metadata identifiers templates

Once enabled the metadata create page displays a new panel, that allows the user to select the metadata identifier template:

![Metadata create page] (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/geonetwork/wiki_images/master/proposals/metadata-identifier-templates/metadata-create-form.png)

Custom identifier: Allows to enter a free-text value for the metadata identifier.

![Custom URN] (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/geonetwork/wiki_images/master/proposals/metadata-identifier-templates/metadata-create-custom-identifier.png)

Autogenerated identifier: GeoNetwork creates a random UUID. It's the same as the actual behaviour in GeoNetwork.

Autogenerated identifier

A list of custom templates: A list of the metadata identifiers templates. When the user selects one of these templates, the form request the different template values (described later)

![Custom templates] (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/geonetwork/wiki_images/master/proposals/metadata-identifier-templates/metadata-create-template-identifier.png)

Metadata identifier templates management

In the Administration Settings panel, has been added a new option Metadata URN templates where the user can create custom metadata identifier templates.

Metadata identifier templates management

For each template a user can define some parameters to fill in the metadata create form. Parameters are defined between curly braces. For example:

urn:x-wmo:md:int.wmo.wis::{TT}{AA}{II}{CCCC}
au.gov.bom::{IDCODE}

The parameters defined between curly braces are rendered in the metadata create page as form fields:

![Custom templates] (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/geonetwork/wiki_images/master/proposals/metadata-identifier-templates/metadata-create-template-identifier.png)

Identifier templates future improvements

For now the template parameters doesn't define any restriction, except that should be filled with some value.

For future releases, some improvements can be added:

Define the type of the parameters
Define the size restrictions of the parameters

A simple option can be to extend the parameter definition like this: {PARAMNAME:TYPE:MINSIZE:MAXSIZE}, but other options like using regular expressions should be checked.