Format Description Service

• Format identification via TNA DROID software.
• Using the identification result, find appropriate JHOVE validator.
• Format validation and characterization using JHOVE
• Transform the result of format characterization into standard schema such as TextMD, DocMD, MIX and AES
• Transform the format description result into PREMIS schema

Quickstart

1. Retrieve a copy of the description service.  You can either create a local git clone of the description service, ex.
%git clone git://github.com/cchou/describe.git
or download a copy from the download page.

2. Test the installation via the test harness. 
%rake spec
%cucumber feature/*

3. Run the description srvice
%ruby describe.rb

Requirements

• ruby (tested on 1.8.6 and 1.8.7)
• java (tested on 1.5 and 1.6)
• cucumber (gem)
• libxml-ruby (gem)
• ruby-xslt (gem)
• rjb (gem. Please make sure JAVA_HOME is set when installing rjb, see http://rjb.rubyforge.org/ for detail. On OSX, the JAVA_HOME should be set to "/Library/Java/Home")
• rspec (gem)
• log4r (gem)
• sinatra (gem) - a minimal web application framework. It will work with any web server such as mongrel, thin, etc.

License

GNU General Public License

Directory Structure

• config: configuration files, including a copy of DROID signature file, jhove config file and configuration to lookup associated validator on a given PUID.
• feature: cucumber feature files
• files: contain test files for test harness. These files are for testing only and can be deleted after deployment.
• jars: contain required java jars for droid and jhove.
• lib: ruby source code
• public: files for public access including jQuery and a sample text file for testing http url.
• spec: rspec files
• views: erb templates
• xsl: stylesheets for schema transformation

Usage

• Use http GET method with a location parameter pointing to the FILE url of the intended file.
  For example, if using curl curl http://localhost:4567/describe?location=file///Users/Desktop/describe/files/etd.pdf

• Use http GET method with a location parameter pointing to the http url of the intended resource. For example, if using curl curl http://localhost:4567/describe?location=http://localhost:4567/test.txt

• Use the associated form to upload a file to the description service via HTTP POST method.

Documentation

development wiki