FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

6.1.1 Which fields are required within an item?

At the very minimum you require the following fields:

• <title>

• <link>

• <nzgls:date.valid>

• <nzgls:identifier>

• <nzgls:type.agency>

Of course, you may add any further elements as required, and the <description> element will make your items a lot more useful!

6.1.2 What is the <nzgls:identifier> field used for?

This field provides each item with a unique identifier. This is used when checking for updates to a given item. It should consist of the date, followed by an incrementing sequence number and finally an abbreviated name. These 3 parameters ensure that the identifier remains unique.

6.1.3 What happens to items with a future start date?

An item with a future start date in the <nzgls:date.valid> element will not get published until that date and time has been reached. Nor will the item be available in the aggregated ouput until that time.

6.1.4 Do items with an expired end date get deleted?

An item with an expired end date in the <nzgls:date.valid> element is simply not shown on the most recent list of articles. It is moved to the archive section of the aggregator.

6.1.5 How long should an item keep appearing within my feed?

An item should appear for atleast 7 days in your feed. This so that items are never missed, even if there are service disruptions or "acts of God".

6.1.6 Why are <nzgls> tags used rather than <dc> tags?

The NZGLS metadata standard is the official New Zealand Government standard for creating discovery-level metadata (see http://www.nzgls.govt.nz/). The standard is based closely on two well-established standards: the Dublin Core (DC) Metadata Element Set and the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS).

6.1.7 Which encoding scheme should we use?

You should use UTF-8 encoding. This means that all characters with an ASCII value higher than 127 (0x7F) are encoded as double byte sequences or as "&#{NUMBER};". Please note that special characters like & (ampersand) should also be encoded using the "&#{NUMBER};" notation.