Meta Data Search API
The meta data search API is a tool within Sitekit CMS which allows a developer or integrator to extend the Sitekit CMS by syndicating pages based on their categorisation or unique properties. The tool automatically generates a list of pages (from the whole site) which match a specified criteria and filters the list according to specified rules. The feed generated is in a standard and compliant format (very much like RSS).
Purpose
The tool is designed to provide a pre-filtered results feed. The search criteria for the results feed can either be preconfigured (so the user clicks a ‘blue’ button to see pages about blue cars) or be taken from a users input (so a user types ‘blue’ into a search box to see pages about blue cars). It should be noted that the tool generates a feed of information, and not a web page this allows the feed to be used by any other compliant website or websystem (including Sitekit itself).
Example usage
- The tool could be used on a car sales website to generate dynamic cross-references within a website where automatic 3 (or X) way links are generated between manufacturer, colour, engine size.
- The tool could be used to categorise articles in multiple ways and allow a user to navigate to an article via multiple categories.
- The tool could be used to automatically share information between Sitekit CMS and another system. For example an HR tool could automatically list pages generated by a certain member of staff, or a bespoke events system could automatically list related pages created on a certain date and which match a certain category.
Description of function
The XML Search API is a web service which lives at the address http://admin.sitekit.net/admin/ws/Metadataplus.asmx
It contains 3 operations as follows
- GetItemsByMetadata
gives list of resources for a given metadata field value. - GetItemsBy2MetadataFieldValues
gives list of resources for a given metadata field value. - GetItemsBy4MetadataFieldValues
gives list of resources for a given metadata field value. This function can be used with 1, 2, 3 or 4 sets of field-value pairs and will still work.
Methods
There are therefore 3 ways to query the web service. Each query can be made via various methods
- SOAP 1.1
- SOAP 1.2
- HTTP POST
- HTTP GET
The query will return an XML feed of the pages / downloads / resources which match the specified paramaters.
Example Scenario
Lets assume we want to list all pages on a website which are triple A accessible.
In this case we can use HTTP GET we can construct an address which asks for the following
Operation: we only want to look at 1 item of meta data
Site: we want to check the website www.sitekit.net
What we
want to
check: accessibility of pagesValue to
look for: triple-A
The URL would look like this
Note, clicking on the above URL will give an XML list of the pages that match the criteria we are looking for. This can be fed into any compliant, interoperable system, including Sitekit CMS itself, and be used to dynamically generate a page.
Because you can create your own meta data scheme, and your own controlled list of permissible values, this feature is truly extensible.
You could have a ‘football’ metadata scheme for pages relating to football with attributes like ‘team’ ‘game’ ‘score’ etc, and a fixed list of values for each.
And then use the generic web service to query the values.
Example Implementation
Clear examples of each of the methods can be seen by visiting the following URL and selecting the operation required.
http://admin.sitekit.net/admin/ws/Metadataplus.asmx
A formal service description can be found at http://admin.sitekit.net/admin/ws/Metadataplus.asmx?WSDL
An example implementation of the other features referred to under ‘environment’ can be found in the relevant documentation. An example Data Island can be found in the XML Data island documentation.
Because Sitekit passed search paramaters through from frontend to back end you can create a search page on Sitekit which passes the search paramaters back to the webservice.
Example Implementation
Clear examples of each of the methods can be seen by visiting the following URL and selecting the operation required.
http://admin.sitekit.net/admin/ws/Metadataplus.asmx
A formal service description can be found at http://admin.sitekit.net/admin/ws/Metadataplus.asmx?WSDL
An example implementation of the other features referred to under ‘environment’ can be found in the relevant documentation. For example an example Data Island can be found in the Data island documentation.