1. Overview
This example tutorial provides explanations and code examples to get an idea on how to define and specify structured data properties and on how to query them.
2. Introduction
yuuvis® Momentum offers a property type for the storage of structured data in JSON format. Thus, it is possible to store interleaved data structures in a queryable way without defining each single sub-property in the schema. The structured data properties should NOT be considered to replace the concept of a well-defined schema. They should be used only if the handling of objects' metadata via the conventional property definitions is not reasonable. Especially, if the structure of metadata and/or the availability of properties differs a lot for the individual object instances, the schema might grow to a really long list of scarcely used properties. This can be avoided by the usage of a property field that can store a JSON structure as value. In this tutorial, the bibliographic information of media in a library is considered an example use case. For this purpose, the set of information for each medium is provided in JSON structure following the concept of BibJSON.
Code examples in GitHub.
3. Requirements
This tutorial is dedicated to experienced users. Please find information on requirements, maven and client configuration in our Importing Documents via Core API tutorial. The handling of any IOException is demonstrated there, too.
4. Definition in the Schema
In the context of the library example, the below displayed app schema is used. It contains two property definitions and one object type definition referencing the properties. The first property bibjsonsample:bibjson
has the property type structureddata
. Its id
matches the expression expected for the validation and the cardinality
is single which is the only accepted value.
This property will be used for the storage of the BibJSON structure containing the bibliographic information of the corresponding medium. The second property bibjsonsample:locations
allows for the assignment of a list of strings indicating storage locations if a printed version is available for the corresponding medium. In the object type definition of bibjsonsample:medium
, both properties are referenced. Additionally, a binary content file can be assigned if necessary as defined in line 25 with the value allowed for the contentStreamAllowed
attribute.
The schema for the bibjsonsample
app is imported via the POST /api/system/apps/{app}/schema
endpoint.
More details and further examples on schema handling are provided in the following tutorial: Managing the Schema
5. Specifying Values during Import
Two example objects will be created as instances of the abbBibjsonsample:medium
object type. Both of them are assigned a BibJSON value for the appbibjsonsample:bibjson
property.
For the individual sub-values of the structured data property, the system can identify integers, booleans and strings. The successfully executed import returns the entire set of metadata for each object, enriched with the system properties.
The first example object is a book. The bibliographic information stored in the appBibjsonsample:bibjson
property contains one integer value specified in line 21. All other sub-values are stored as strings. In addition to the appBibjsonsample:bibjson
property, two storage locations for printed versions are specified.
The second example object is a collection of articles without corresponding printed versions. The structure of the JSON value for the appBibjsonsample:bibjson
property looks completely different.
6. Search Queries
The individual sub-values within the JSON value for the appBibjsonsample:bibjson
property are queryable.
In this chapter, some example search queries are explained.
6.1. Example 1
This query statement requests a search for all objects of type appBibjsonsample:medium
. The full set of metadata will be returned for each of them. In the example context of this tutorial, only two objects match the query: The book and the collection that were imported before.
6.2. Example 2
In order to return only the bibliographic information in the result list of the search request, select the appBibjsonsample:bibjson
property.
6.3. Example 3
It is even possible to return specified sub-values of the JSON structure stored in the appBibjsonsample:bibjson
property. If you specify an index within a list, the values for the list elements with lower indices will be replaced by null in the return statement as can be seen in line 9.