Re: [backstage] BBC Programme Catalogue

[Tony Hirst]

ben- Yes there are API's - loads of them!  If you perform your search you should see "Feeds" for every page returned. yes... For example http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/contributor/4362 (Tony Blair) returns FOAF data (http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/xml/contributor/4362) and an Atom dump (http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/feed/contributor/4362). got that sussed... If you want to convert your web-based searches into REST-like requests, you want to pick out the "/infax/" in the url and change it to "/xml/" and "/feed/". I hadn't picked up on feed... I'd guessed at things like http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/xml/search/dr%20who which gives: Template is missing Missing template /home/system/opencatalogue/www/20051212/app/views/xml/search.rhtml but the atom/feed search: http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/feed/search/dr%20who http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/feed/search/t209 works fine:-) Now all I have to do is to persuade those in the know to get this feed fed into the under construction OU federated search engine ;-) thanks tony PS any ideas about the convention used to generate catalogue numbers - the OU programmes I found in a series search all seem to have the form: xOUxnnnx (e.g. FOUT695S) - is there any sense that can be made by parsing the catalogue IDs? ----------------------------------------------------------- Tony Hirst mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] homepage: http://robofesta.open.ac.uk/tony blog: http://ouseful.open.ac.uk/blog/ Dept. of ICT, Faculty of Technology Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK Tel: +44 (0)19086 52789, m./SMS 07709 766223