Das2Validation

DAS/2 Validation Service

About

The NIH grant included the development of a validation service to verify conformance of DAS/2 clients and servers with the DAS/2 specification. This should promote consistency between different implementations and thereby enhance interoperability of DAS/2 based systems.

Server URL

http://cgi.biodas.org:8080/

HTTP Interface:

  http://cgi.biodas.org:8080/validate_url?url=http://example.com

If the validator is down, please notify the discussion list.

Usage Information

This information pertains to the HTTP interface and was originally provided by Andrew Dalke on the DAS/2 discussion list: http://lists.open-bio.org/pipermail/das2/2006-October/000863.html.

Parameter: url

Parameter "url" is required. This is the URL to validate.

%curl 'http://cgi.biodas.org:8080/validate_url?url=http://slashdot.org/'
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<DAS_VALIDATION url="http://slashdot.org/">
  <MESSAGE text="Unknown Content-Type 'text/html'." severity="error" />
<MESSAGE text="expat: mismatched tag at byte 1794, line 29, column 3"  
severity="fatal" />
</DAS_VALIDATION>

Parameter: doctype

It has an optional parameter "doctype" which is the document type to expect

%curl 'http://cgi.biodas.org:8080/validate_url?url=http://das.biopackages.net/das/genome/human/;doctype=sources'
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<DAS_VALIDATION url="http://das.biopackages.net/das/genome/human/"  
doctype="sources" />

In that last case there were no messages.

The XML document is

<DAS_VALIDATION url="URL-used-for-the-validation"  
doctype="the-document-type"? >
   <MESSAGE severity="one of info, warning, error, fatal"
            text="the error message" />  *
</DAS_VALIDATION>

A note about the doctype. If the server could not get the document then the validation will not have a doctype even if you gave it one.

%curl 'http://cgi.biodas.org:8080/validate_url?url=http://slashdot.org;doctype=types'
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<DAS_VALIDATION url="http://slashdot.org">
  <MESSAGE text="Received Content-Type 'text/html', expected  
'application/x-das-types+xml'." severity="fatal" />
  <MESSAGE text="expat: mismatched tag at byte 1794, line 29, column 3"  
severity="fatal" />
</DAS_VALIDATION>

If you tell it the wrong doctype and it gets something in XML then it assumes the reponse is in the given doctype

%curl 'http://cgi.biodas.org:8080/validate_url?url=http://das.biopackages.net/das/genome/human/;doctype=types'
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<DAS_VALIDATION url="http://das.biopackages.net/das/genome/human/"  
doctype="types">
  <MESSAGE text="Received Content-Type 'application/x-das-sources+xml',  
expected 'application/x-das-types+xml'." severity="fatal" />
  <MESSAGE text="Expected element  
'{http://biodas.org/documents/das2}TYPES' but got  
'{http://biodas.org/documents/das2}SOURCES' at byte 41, line 3, column  
2" severity="fatal" />
  <MESSAGE text="element "SOURCES" from namespace  
"http://biodas.org/documents/das2" not allowed in this  
context at byte 41, line 3, column 2" severity="error" />

If no input doctype is given then it will guess at the doctype based on analysis of what it got from the remote server

%curl 'http://cgi.biodas.org:8080/validate_url?url=http://das.biopackages.net/das/genome/human/'
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<DAS_VALIDATION url="http://das.biopackages.net/das/genome/human/"  
doctype="sources">
  <MESSAGE text="Assuming doctype of 'sources' based on Content-Type"  
severity="info" />
</DAS_VALIDATION>

This XML should be easy for anyone to parse.