Once you have performed your search and found an interesting record a Details request can be performed. This will provid all the relevant information about the selected record.
http://demosrch.publicdata.com/pddetails.php?db=alsx&rec=1&dlnumber=DOCS&id=DOCS&disp=XML
Lets take a look at the composition of a PDdetails 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.
pddetails.php
- since we are performing a details from the publicdata system we call pddetails.php
db=alsx
- db is the parameter name for the database we want to get information about.
rec=1
- The specific record in the database found from searching.(varies depending on edition)
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.
(optional)ed=55
- Which edition of the database you are using. If not specified it default to the most recent, however we recommend always providing this.
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.
detailsdata
Description:
This is where information specific to this request as a whole will go.
Path:
pddata->detailsdata
Attributes:
db - The name of the database used in this detail lookup.
ed - The edition was used during this lookup.
rec - The record that was used in this lookup.
title - The Human readable short description of the database.
dataset
Description:
This is where the xml format gets a little complicated. It is important to remember that this request may return a recursive xml document. It will always have a dataset with dataitems underneath that. Then underneath the dataitems there maybe more datasets thus making it potentially recursive.
Path:
pddata->dataset
Attributes:
label - This is a human readable short description,or label, of the dataset.
dataitem
Description:
Think of this as a result from a dataset.
Path:
...->dataset->dataitem
textdata
Description:
Text information for its parent dataitem.
Path:
...->dataset->dataitem->textdata
field
Description:
One bit of text information.
Path:
...->dataset->dataitem->textdata->field
Attributes:
label - A short description of this field. In other words its a label.
hyperlink - If the text information needs to link somewhere this is the link.
embeddata
Description:
This is where data that needs to be embedded will go. At the moment we only use images but we may use more going forward.
Path:
...->dataset->dataitem->embeddata
image
Description:
This is where images, obviously, will be.
Path:
...->dataset->dataitem->embeddata->image
Attributes:
label - A short description or a caption relating to the image.
hyperlink - A hyperlink to where the image is served from.
annotationdata
Description:
This is where other information that publicdata thinks maybe relevent to the record. It is not officially part of the record.
Path:
...->dataset->dataitem->textdata->annotationdata
Attributes:
label - A short description of the text information.
hyperlink - Should a link be in the annotation data it will go here.
PublicData API Documentation