A PDdbdetails request or Database Details request is used to find out basic information about a given database. Note that this is for databases only any thing prefixed with grp is not a group and will not work with this request.
http://demosrch.publicdata.com/pddbdetails.php?o=aldoc&dlnumber=DOCS&id=DOCS&ed=200&disp=XML
Lets take a look at the composition of a PDdbdetails request.
http://demosrch.publicdata.com
- This is the servername. Again we are using demo for this tutorial but you will use one of the searchservers provided to you when you
logged in for the day.
pddbdetails.php
- since we are performing a database details from the publicdata system we call pddbdetails.php
o=aldoc
- o is the parameter name for the database we want to get information about.
ed=200
- ed is the parameter name for the database edition we want to get information about.
dlnumber=DOCS
- this is same username that you logged in with.
id=DOCS
- This is your accounts daily id number that we obtained when we logged in for the day.
disp=XML
- This is the display format that we wish to recieve. Since we are an API user this will be XML.
Note: We use GET requests in the tutorial but the parameter can be sent using POST.
This should be done if the length of the request exceeds the 255 character limit.
Here is the response from that request.
Now Lets break down the XML level by level. The Attributes are in blue.
dbdata
Description:
This node is meant to contain data specific to this database details request.
Path:
pddata->dbdata
title
Description:
This is the human readable title for the database.
Path:
pddata->dbdata->title
records
Description:
This is the total number of records in the database.
Path:
pddata->dbdata->records
updated
Description:
This is a timestamp for when the database was last updated.
Path:
pddata->dbdata->updated
infotext
Description:
This is human readable information about the database.
Path:
pddata->dbdata->infotext
PublicData API Documentation