HowToImplementService

Is your repository metadata in a format which the MST doesn't currently support? Or would you like to do some extra processing on your metadata before drupal harvests it for front end searching? Not a problem. As advertised, XC's MST is quite extensible. This document will guide you through the process of creating a development environment which makes it easy for you to write, test, and deploy your very own MST service.

There's 2 ways you can create an MST service:

• simply implement the MetadataService interface
• build on our generic implementations of the MetadataService

The second option is what we strongly recommend you start with. We left the first option available for the small chance that someone might want to optimize processing in a different way than we've already done it. However, we've already spent considerable time designing and implementing an optimized, high-throughput system, so most likely you'll simply want to harness that.

What's the minimal steps to write a service?

1. download and install the jdk (we're using 1.6)
2. download and install apache ant
3. download and install mysql (version 5.0 or higher) * (optionally install MySQL Workbench)
4. download and unzip the example service from here
5. (optional) change the top directory name from example to the name of your service
6. update the properties file to your liking
   
   custom.properties
7. NOTE: We currently require all services to fit within our classpath structure, xc.mst.services

  service.name=MyTotallyAwesomeService
  service.version=1.0
  service.classname=xc.mst.services.MyTotallyAwesomeService
  
  DatabaseUrl=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306
  Database=MetadataServicesToolkit
  DatabaseUsername=root
  DatabasePassword=root

1. create your MetadataService in src/java (get more details here)

public class MyTotallyAwesomeService extends GenericMetadataService {
    public List<OutputRecord> process(InputRecord r) {
        List<OutputRecord> records = new ArrayList<OutputRecord>();
        OutputRecord out = null;
        if (r.getSuccessors() != null && r.getSuccessors().size() > 0) {
            // This will overwrite the previous successor record
            out = r.getSuccessors().get(0);
        } else {
            // This creates a new output record
            out = getRecordService().createRecord();
        }
        // see here for more details on mode
        // http://www.extensiblecatalog.org/doc/MST/api/xc/mst/bo/record/RecordIfc.html#setMode%28java.lang.String%29
        r.setMode(Record.JDOM_MODE);
	Element metadataEl = r.getOaiXmlEl();
	Element foo = metadataEl.getChild("foo");
	out.setOaiXml("<bar>you've been barred: "+foo.getText()+"</bar>");
	records.add(out);
	return records;
    }
}

1. to test your service see this page. <a href='Hidden comment:

Do one of the following (from easiest to hardest)

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[ServiceFileSystemTesting File input/output testing]

deploy your service into the MST

note: this doesn"t work yet, so don"t try it

issue the ant build task to build your service

  ant zip

see the MST services guide to install your service

checkout or download the entire mst source

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