Offer API call to check whether prefix exists or not in each of multiple registries

[jmcmurry]

This is a dead simple request to reduce prefix collisions. Users could ping it to assess whether a prefix has been claimed previously. Registries could use it to check availability before issuing a new prefix. It is not everything (reverse lookups etc); that is for another time. The simplest thing that is possibly useful is also quite easy to do.

Here is the raw table of expected responses.

The output for now does not need to be fancy; in fact it should be as human readable as possible.

Eg, for the prefix foobar it could look like this:

Note that you need to check all casing permutations (eg. 'go' and 'GO' and 'Go', and even 'gO'). If the prefix exists, include the link so the person can investigate.

Real-time prefix availability report for "GO"

Registry	Availability	Link if taken	How to register if available
Identifiers.org	Taken	http://identifiers.org/go
Ontobee	Taken	http://www.ontobee.org/browser/index.php?o=go
Bioportal	Taken	http://purl.bioontology.org/ontology/go
LOV	Available		http://lov.okfn.org/dataset/lov/suggest
Prefix.cc	Taken	http://prefix.cc/go
SciCrunch	Available		email to info@scicrunch.org
DataHub	Available		https://discuss.okfn.org/t/creating-a-dataset-on-the-datahub/1627
BioSharing	Taken	https://biosharing.org/search/?q=&shortname=go&search_state=visible

Note that the GO DBXRefs Registry also needs to be parsed from here however, there is no individual call I am aware of that will dynamically return a binary answer. Perhaps @cmungall knows different.

[jmcmurry]

@jkunze do you happen to have any way of looking up a prefix on n2t? I know you currently support more than are in the identifiers.org corpus.

[jkunze]

Not yet. What I could do relatively easily is make a yaml file available that has the full set that N2T.net supports.

[jmcmurry]

"prefix" : "go" { 
     "summary" :{
         "sources-where-registered" : 5,
         "sources-where-available" : 3
         },
     "sources" :{
          "source" : "Identifiers.org" {
               "status" : "registered",
               "found-here" : "http://identifiers.org/go"
                    },
          "source" : "Ontobee" {
               "status" : "registered",
               "found-here" : "http://www.ontobee.org/browser/index.php?o=go"
               },
          "source" : "Bioportal" {
               "status" : "registered",
               "found-here" : "http://purl.bioontology.org/ontology/go"
               },
          "source" : "BioSharing" {
               "status" : "registered",
               "found-here" : "https://biosharing.org/search/?q=&shortname=go&search_state=visible"
               },
          "source" : "Prefix.cc" {
               "status" : "registered",
               "found-here" : "http://prefix.cc/go"
               },
          "source" : "SciCrunch" {
               "status" : "not registered",
               "register-here" : "email to info@scicrunch.org"
               },
          "source" : "DataHub" {
               "status" : "not registered",
               "register here" : "https://discuss.okfn.org/t/creating-a-dataset-on-the-datahub/1627"
               },
          "source" : "LOV" {
               "status" : "not registered",
               "register-here" : "http://lov.okfn.org/dataset/lov/suggest"
               }
     }
} ```