niconoe
commented
8 years ago Thanks @nickynicolson !
I'm currently in the process of adding support from other kind of archives, and this is really helpful since it's closely related.
- I'm planning to support cases 1 and 2 described in the table of page 2 in Darwin Core Archive Format, Reference Guide to the XML Descriptor File.
- When an Archive lacks a Metafile, it will try to find metadata in a file name EML.xml. If no EML file is present, we assume there's no metadata in the archive.
The case you suggest is a bit different: we do have a metafile, but it doesn't reference any metadata file. I think the best solution in that case is to just gracefully set dwca.metadatato None.
Another option would be to also use a default of EML.xml, but according to the DC spec you mentioned, there's no default value for this attribute.
Do you agree with this course of action? I think by all this, we'll support a whole new range of archives.
BTW, I often have doubts about the standards when discussing such topics, so I've opened a wiki page at https://github.com/BelgianBiodiversityPlatform/python-dwca-reader/wiki/Things-to-clarify-about-the-standards to collect such questions, that may be useful to report later. Don't hesitate if you want to contribute :)
nickynicolson
In the DC spec the metadata attribute in the archive element is not listed as required, but reading an archive without a metadata element fails. [Note: is this DC spec current? If not please add a comment with a pointer to the current spec and I'll update the issue as required.]
Example archive without metadata element in the archive attribute (in meta.xml): http://zingiberaceae.e-monocot.org/dwca.zip
Error is thrown in
ArchiveDescriptorin the filedwca\descriptors.py. As this method is reading frommeta.xml(itself hardcoded as a deafult) it seems reasonable to try to use a default ofmeta.xmlif the metadata attribute is missing.