Static Index Meta-Databases

Goal

This folder hosts static versions of Index Meta-Databases for those providers that only have one main sub-database (or very few sub-databases) and do not wish to maintain an OPTIMADE Index Meta-Database themselves.

Note: while providing an Index Meta-Database is not required by the OPTIMADE API specification, it is instead required in order to be listed in this List of Providers (providers.optimade.org).

When should I use a static Index Meta-Database hosted in this repository

If you add a new provider and do not wish to host an Index Meta-Database yourself, feel free to add an Index Meta-Database here.

However, if your Index Meta-Database is rapidly changing (e.g., because the list of sub-databases changes often), please host it yourself to avoid multiple commits and pull requests to this repository at every change. Rare changes are instead of course welcome, e.g., if you have to change your DNS name or the description, or if you need just to add one static new sub-database, like a test database.

Note that “changes” here refer solely to changes to the list of sub-databases; the content of each sub-database can change at any time without the need to modify the Index Meta-Database.

Instructions on how to add a new static Index Meta-Database

1. Go to the folder src/index-metadbs, copy the existing template folder (exmpl) to a new folder, where the new folder name should be the identifier of your provider (we will use exmpl2 here and in the following as the name of the new provider). In particular, this will contain a v1 subfolder, with two files inside it: info.json and links.json.

2. Adapt the content of the links.json file. In particular, provide a new links entry resource object for each sub-database that you want to link to. In the special case in which you have a single “main” sub-database, just change the existing values as follows:

   • change the id to your provider identifier: "exmpl" -> "exmpl2"
   • change the attributes name, description and homepage to contain the correct content. Please reuse the same content as the one you specified in the main providers.json file.
   • point the base_url to the base URL of your OPTIMADE implementation. Note, this should be the un-versioned base URL (see the OPTIMADE API specification for more information on this).

3. Adapt the content of the info.json file. In particular, you should change two fields:

   • change the URL of the available_api_versions by replacing exmpl with your identifier: https://providers.optimade.org/index-metadbs/exmpl2/v1/.

   • change the id inside data -> relationships -> default -> data -> id from exmpl to the correct ID from the list of links in the links.json file. As explained in the OPTIMADE API specification, this should be the ID of the database that should be considered as the “default” sub-database by clients.

     If you only have one sub-database and you followed the instructions above, you should use here your provider identifier. If you do not wish to have a default database, set the relationships value to an empty dictionary or set the value of relationships -> default -> data to null.

4. In the top-level providers.json file, point the base_url of your provider to https://providers.optimade.org/index-metadbs/exmpl2/.

5. Create a pull request, and check that all automated continuous-integration tests pass. Also, you can check that the new Index Meta-Database properly works at the expected link using the Netlify preview (just click on the netlify/optimade-providers/deploy-preview entry of the GitHub checks that will appear in the GitHub PR Conversation page after a few seconds).