unAPI

UnAPI defines a simple programming interface for providing data individually identified objects over a stateless web service ( Representational State Transfer ), as well as a method to refer to HTML pages to the base URL of the web service and to identifiers with which the web service can be queried.

Construction

The HTTP-based unAPI web service supports two HTTP GET Parameters: format and id.

For reference to the base URL of a unAPI services, a link element of the Hyper Text Markup Language is used this is also referred to as auto-discovery process is also used in other areas (links to feeds, etc.).

Unique identifiers may be awarded on a web page with a microformat. However, this specification is not yet an official part of the microformat project.

History

UnAPI goes back to Reflections on a API to disseminate COinS ( " COinS -PMH " ), which was abandoned towards the simpler unAPI. Significant author is Daniel Chudnov. Version 1 of the unAPI specification was published on 23 June 2006.

Dissemination

UnAPI source applications is particularly common in library open. For example unAPI can be used by reference management software Zotero as an alternative to COinS to retrieve bibliographic metadata about publications.