Python Client for the URN PID service by the National Library of Norway

This is a library and a set of command line tools for communicating with the SOAP ID service available at the National Library of Norway.

For more information (in Norwegian) about the service:

• Regarding URN: http://www.nb.no/idtjeneste/about_urn.jsf
• Regarding the SOAP API: http://www.nb.no/idtjeneste/about_urn_webservice.jsf

Installation

The library is available as NbUrnClient on PyPI. To install it to your desired python environment: pip install NbUrnClient

The command line utilities are not included. As long as you have the NbUrnClient library installed, all you need to do is to download the bin and config directories and follow the instructions under Configuration.

Configuration

The config directory contains an example of the YAML config file used by the client (config.yml.example). Copy this to e.g. config.yml and replace the dummy entries with the information you have received from the National Library.

Command Line Tools

The bin directory contains a set of command line tools that make use of the library.

Usage examples:

NB: Most of these examples (except find_urn and find_urns_for_url) require a valid user account.

To reserve the next available urn in some series, use reserve_next_urn:

./bin/reserve_next_urn --series-code urn:series:code

The service will return information about the newly generated URN. To add a URL to the newly generated URN (where foo is the new URN adress returned from the previous step), use add_url:

./bin/add_url --urn foo --url http://www.someurl.com

You can add more than one URL to a URN. To register one of them as the default URL for a URN, use set_default_url:

./bin/set_default_url --urn foo --url http://www.someurl.com

You can combine the previous steps using create_urn:

./bin/create_urn --series-code urn:series:code --url http://www.someurl.com/

The service will return the created URN, with the specified URL registered and set as default.

You can request information about some previously registered URN using find_urn:

./bin/find_urn --urn foo

You can also request information for all URNs containing a specific URL with find_urns_for_url:

./bin/find_urns_for_url --url http://www.someurl.com

Library

The nb_urn_client directory contains the library for communicating with the SOAP API. It is a thin wrapper around the SOAP API calls. To see how it's used, take a look at the commands in the bin directory.

Library usage example:

The following example makes use of the library to do more or less the same as in the command line tools examples:

import nb_urn_client

# Instantiate a client with some config file
c = nb_urn_client.NbUrnClient(config_file="config.yml")

# You need to login first
c.login()

# Reserve the next available URN in the given series
new_urn = c.reserve_next_urn('urn:series:code')

# Register some valid URL for the newly created URN
c.add_url(new_urn.URN, "http://www.someurl.com/")

# Register another URL for the same URN
c.add_url(new_urn.URN, "http://www.someotherurl.com/")

# Set one of the registered URLs to be the default URL
c.set_default_url(new_urn.URN, "http://www.someurl.com/")

####################################################
# ALTERNATIVE: Using create_urn:
# new_urn = c.create_urn('urn:series:code', 'http://www.someurl.com/')
# c.add_url(new_urn.URN, 'http://www.someotherurl.com/')
####################################################

# Retrieve the URN you just created and have a look
print c.find_urn(new_urn.URN)

# Retrieve all URNs containing some URL and have a look
print c.find_urns_for_url("http://www.someurl.org")

# Logout when you're done
c.logout()

Dependencies

• suds 0.4
• PyYAML