API Documentation

Table of contents

• http/https
• Output Formats and Content Negotiation
• TEI Output Formats
• Requesting GND IDs
• Correspondence Metadata Interchange-Format (CMIF)
• International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)
• Swagger OpenAPI

http/https

Since 2018 the WeGA webpages are served only through encrypted https. Requests made via http are redirected to https. Hence, the following URLs in the examples are compatible with both protocols.

Output Formats and Content Negotiation

Several output formats are made available for every resource via content negotiation. At present, HTML, TEI-XML, JSON-LD and Plain Text are supported and you can request the desired format by either adding the appropriate file extension or by specifying the HTTP Accept Header. If both are given, the suffix takes precedence. NB: The plain text output is considered an experimental feature!

The persistent URL of every resource is composed of the domain “weber-gesamtausgabe.de” and its ID.

Please note that you’ll need the -L switch since most requests will be redirected and that the indication of the output format (via suffix notation or HTTP Accept Header) is mandatory.

TEI Output Formats

When requesting a TEI XML document (see Content Negotiation above) the default output format is our WeGA TEI format. This format is a “TEI-Customization” and documented at https://github.com/Edirom/WeGA-ODD. Alternatively, you can request more standard formats via the URL parameter format; at present, “TEI all” (format=tei_all) and “TEI simplePrint” (format=tei_simplePrint) are supported.

Requesting GND IDs

The WeGA API supports requests made via GND IDs for the types “Person” (formerly PND), “Organisation/Institution” (formerly GKD), and “Work”. Additionally, BEACON files are provided for these types at https://weber-gesamtausgabe.de/pnd_beacon.txt, https://weber-gesamtausgabe.de/gkd_beacon.txt, and https://weber-gesamtausgabe.de/works_beacon.txt. Requests can be made by appending a valid GND ID to the base address at https://weber-gesamtausgabe.de/en/gnd/.

Please note that you’ll need the -L switch since the requests will be redirected and that the indication of the output format (via suffix notation or HTTP Accept Header) is mandatory.

Detailed information about the BEACON format can be found at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_links_to_external_resources .

Correspondence Metadata Interchange-Format (CMIF)

Since 2014 the WeGA provides metadata about its correspondence corpus as Correspondence Metadata Interchange-Format (CMIF). The URL of the BEACON-file is (since Release 4.8) https://weber-gesamtausgabe.de/cmif_v1.xml. The old URL https://weber-gesamtausgabe.de/correspDesc.xml is considered deprecated and may be removed in a future release.

With the 4.8 release, an endpoint for the CMIF v2 (which is still in the draft stage) was set up at https://weber-gesamtausgabe.de/cmif_v2.xml. Of the extensions in CMIF v2, only cmif:mentionsPerson and cmif:mentionsPlace are currently supported here.

Detailed information about the CMIF can be found at the correspSearch Webservice and at the TEI Correspondence SIG GitHub page .

International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)

The WeGA provides access to the images—for which we have permission to do so—via the IIIF standard . Metadata for the images (info.json) are created automatically by our Digilib image server and the “Resource Structure” for the IIIF Presentation API (manifest.json) is generated fom the TEI documents by the WeGA-WebApp.

The persistent URL of every resource is composed of the domain “weber-gesamtausgabe.de” and the path “/IIIF/$ID/manifest.json”.

Swagger OpenAPI

The WeGA offers a dedicated RESTful interface at https://weber-gesamtausgabe.de/api/v1/ in compliance with the Swagger OpenAPI Specification 3.0 . This interface shall provide for fast and comfortable discovery of documents from the digital edition.