get_metadata.py

The get_metadata.py web service provides routines for retrieving metadata for data sets at the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS). By passing certain parameters to this utility, you can specify the data set, metadata format, and output style that you wish to view. For questions, please contact: info@pacioos.org.

Parameters
Examples
Alias

id:

Specify the data set identifier for the data set that you want to view metadata. Some examples include:

If you do not know the data set identifier for your desired data set, find a list here or use our data search page.

format:

Specify the format that you want to view the metadata in. This includes the following geospatial metadata standards:

ISO:	International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 19115:2003 Geographic Information Metadata
FGDC:	U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata (CSDGM)
citation:	Produces a suggested data citation from various ISO 19115:2003 metadata fields.

If you do not specify a format parameter, the output will default to ISO.

style:

Specify the output style that you want to view the metadata in. This includes one of the following options:

HTML:	Hypertext Markup Language: view metadata as a Web page.
text:	View metadata as a plain text document.
XML:	Extensible Markup Language

If you do not specify a style parameter, the output will default to HTML. The "citation" format is not available in XML.

Examples

Here are some examples of how to call the get_metadata.py utility:

Alias

For convenience and to help avoid URL changes to this service in the future, get_metadata.py can also be accessed through the following preferred method. The dataset id becomes the page name (e.g. NS01agg), the style becomes the page name suffix (.html, .xml, .txt), and you can tack on the optional format parameter if you prefer to access FGDC rather than the default ISO output. The above examples are transformed as follows: