Bigfoot Items Query

In keeping with the self documenting easy experimentation style of Platform API Services, this user guide article is best read in conjunction with a real example. To open a new window containing the html interface, to the Items Query API, for a Bigfoot Store containing bibliographic records, click here.

You will have been presented with a screen which contains prompts and selection boxes which relate to the required and optional parameters defined in the API reference document

• Search store: - maps to the query parameter.
• Maximum results to return: - maps to the max parameter.
• Offset: - maps to the offset parameter - the offset from start of results set.
• XSL Stylesheet: - maps to the optional xsl parameter - uri of the style sheet to be used to transform results set.
• Content-Type: - maps to the optional content-type parameter - The http content type value to be used when returning transformed output.

As will all Talis Platform APIs, this is the default screen you receive in html when accessing the API without passing any parameters.

Searching

Entering a search term in to the search prompt and clicking the Search button will return the results of a search across all indexed terms from records stored in the Bigfoot Store. The results will be returned in XML formatted as an RSS 1.0 feed. If you are using a web browser which recognizes the format of the feed, such as Firefox 2.0 or Internet Explorer 7.0, or later, the XML will be hidden from you as the browser formats the data in a user friendly manner. To see the raw XML when using RSS aware browsers, you can select the view source option in the browser.

There is a powerful query syntax supported by this API. For a detailed understanding of this syntax, consult the Search Query Syntax Reference document. Some of the basic concepts of the syntax are as follows:

• Terms:

  A query is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases.

  A Single Term is a single word such as "test" or "hello".

  A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as "hello dolly".

  Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query (see below).

• Fields:

  Fielded data is supported. When performing a search you can either specify a field, or use the default field. The field names and default field is specific to individual Bigfoot Stores.

  You can search any field by typing the field name followed by a colon ":" and then the term you are looking for.

  As an example, let's assume the index contains three fields, title, author and all which is the default field. If you want to find the records entitled "Harry Potter" which contains the text "Rowling" in any indexed field, you can enter: title:"Harry Potter" AND Rowling

• Boolean Operators:

  Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. AND, OR, and NOT as Boolean operators(Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS), are supported. Individual terms are by default AND'd together if no operator is supplied. ie. Harry Potter is equivalent to Harry AND Potter.

Paging Results

By using the 'max' and 'offset' parameters is is possible by a series of consecutive queries to page through a set of results returned from a query against a store.

Output Transformation

With use of the 'xsl' and 'content-type' parameters it is possible to transform the, default RSS 1.0 based, XML results output in to a form suitable for display or import in an application of your choice. For example:

• CSV file:
  
  xsl: http://research.talis.com/2007/TDN-Documentation-examples/example-xsl/csv.xsl
  content-type: text/html
  Resultant output: Click here.




• HTML table Style:
  
  xsl: http://research.talis.com/2007/TDN-Documentation-examples/example-xsl/table.xsl
  content-type: text/html
  Resultant Output: Click here.




• Table in Microsoft Excel:
  
  xsl: http://research.talis.com/2007/TDN-Documentation-examples/example-xsl/table.xsl
  content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel
  Resultant Output: Click here.




• Library OPAC Style:
  
  xsl: http://research.talis.com/2007/TDN-Documentation-examples/example-xsl/prism.xsl
  content-type: text/html
  Resultant Output: Click here.

Note:You may notice that the URL produced by these XSL Transform examples all start with http://api.talis.com/tx?. This is because these transformations are achieved by redirecting the output of the API call to the Platform Transform service. Further information about the Transform Service can be found here.