This document describes the URL syntax to be used for writing target hyperlinks to the new WilsonWeb system. The target URL syntax functions in several contexts:

► Automatic Login
allows a remote system to provide automated access to WilsonWeb. This functionality also enables remote systems to disambiguate WilsonWeb customer identification in cases where there are overlapping TCP/IP or Patron ID ranges in the authentication database.

► OpenURL Syntax

► Remote Query
allows a remote system to provide a hyperlink to a set of results on WilsonWeb. The query is written into the URL using one of 2 syntaxes. The first supported syntax uses the OpenURL syntax query. The second syntax uses the search engine query syntax directly. Both syntaxes will automatically execute a search on WilsonWeb and will return the search results or search error screen to the user.

► NEW! Journal Issue Linking
allows a remote system to obtain Journal Title and Journal Issue data from the online journal directory. The issues lists provided by the Journal Directory are linked to WilsonWeb to permit retrieval of articles from any desired journal issue.

► XML Document Retrieval
syntax to return a raw XML record. This is primarily for use by link resolvers that need access to metadata not found on OpenURL source links.

► Product IDs

 
Automatic Login

The base URL for jumpstart login is:

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml

If the link is followed from a valid referring site, OR the user’s browser is on a machine with a valid TCP/IP address, OR the administrator of the customer site has installed a WilsonWeb login cookie on the user’s machine, this URL will bring the user to their default startup page in WilsonWeb.

If there is a need to disambiguate overlapping TCP/IP ranges for sites that may be members of multiple customer accounts in the authentication database, the following syntax can be used to force a particular customer ID. The example assumes that there is a customer with ID of 123456789 in the authentication database:

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?CustID=123456789

The same syntax can be used to “disambiguate” overlapping Patron IDs at the patron ID login screen:

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/login_patronid.jhtml?CustID=123456789

In this case, after login at the patron ID screen, the patronID will be checked to ensure that it matches one of the patron IDs registered for the customer ID provided in the URL. If this is the case, the user will be logged in to the account given by the CustID in the URL, even if another CustID uses the same patron ID.

Username/Password: Although not recommended, the system also supports adding the username and password as parameters to the jumpstart screen, using the parameters ‘un’ and ‘pw’ for username and password respectively:

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?un=username&pw=password

If the username and password provided in the URL does not lead to a valid customer ID or if only one of these parameters is provided, the user will be redirected to the login screen. (Note: In the current implementation, if the ‘un’ parameter alone is provided, the username will be blank on the login page.) Since the password is sent as clear text on the URL, this method should only be used if no other automatic login method is available.

Automatic Product Selection

WilsonWeb product URL names can be appended to a jumpstart hyperlink to cause automated product selection. This is achieved by adding a ‘prod’ parameter as in the following example. The value of the prod= parameter must be a valid product URL name or a set of valid product URL names, separated by commas as in this example:

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?prod=ASTFT,OMNIFT

The above URL will work with jumpstart hyperlinks utilizing TCP/IP, HTTP referring site and username/password Cookies as the login method. Note: If the user fails jumpstart (because they are coming from a computer that does not have a registered TCP/IP address for example) the code will direct them to the login page. After they login using their user name and password, the selected products will be pre-selected, just as if their jumpstart hyperlink had initially succeeded.

HTTP query parameters can of course be combined, so if you want to specify customer ID and product selections (e.g. to disambiguate overlapping TCP/IP ranges)

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?CustID=12345678&prod=ASTFT,OMNIFT

 
OpenURL Syntax

The new WilsonWeb supports OpenURL parameters as the URL target syntax to retrieve individual items or bundles of items. The syntax for the OpenURL parameters are documented in http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/sfx_openurl.html.
Here is an example of a properly formatted OpenURL query used with jumpstart.jhtml. The product selection is done using the SID parameter (note: line breaks are included just for clarity), in this case the product OMNI FT is selected. To conform to the OpenURL syntax, the format of the SID parameter is SID=HWW:<product URL name list>.

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?genre=article
&sid=HWW:OMNIFT&issn=0009-2347
&title=Chemical+%26+Engineering+News&stitle=Chem+Eng+News

The OpenURL syntax also supports multiple product selections as in this example.

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?genre=article
&sid=HWW:OMNIFT,ASTFT&issn=0009-2347
&title=Chemical+%26+Engineering+News&stitle=Chem+Eng+News

This query also illustrates the requirement that the http query string (the part after the ‘?’ character) must be URL encoded, in order to adhere to the HTTP standard.

The example query shown above is multi-result query: It will select all articles in the journal Chemical Engineering News, for the OMNIFT and ASTFT product databases.

The following query selects a single record (line breaks have been inserted for documentation clarity only, they are not valid in the URL). In this case the product is ASTFT

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?genre=article
&sid=HWW:ASTFT
&aulast=Van&aufirst=Sang+T.&issn=0361-8773
&title=Journal+of+Coatings+Technology
&stitle=J+Coat+Technol
&atitle=Comparison+of+methods+to+assess+pigment+dispersion
&volume=73&issue=923&spage=61&epage=70&date=2001-12

Note that the OpenURL syntax defines parameters for the article and book items that are common in bibliographic and book catalog databases. It does not define parameters for ‘person,’ ‘fact,’ or ‘art object’ as would be required to retrieve items from biography databases, fact databases, and art object databases found in the HW Wilson product line. For this reason, not all products are currently searchable using the OpenURL syntax. The table at the end of this document indicates which products from the Wilson product line can be searched using the OpenURL remote query syntax described above.

Each parameter in an OpenURL query request, except sid= is optional. At least one metadata parameter must be provided. When two or more metadata parameters are indicated on the OpenURL, only those records that match all of the parameters will be returned. Therefore, if some of the parameters are essentially redundant (Journal Title and ISSN, for example), you need to specify only one of them. Searches will be more successful if they use the minimum number of bibliographic data elements required to unambiguously identify the desired article or articles. Adding extra redundant parameters only increases the likelihood that one of the elements may not match what is used in the HW Wilson record.

Remote Query Using Advanced Boolean Syntax

When searching for individual records or groups of records, the WilsonWeb target link syntax offers an alternative to the OpenURL syntax. This feature uses the search engine syntax directly in the requesting URL. Use the advanced Boolean syntax when you want to use target URLs to search indexes that are not defined by the OpenURL. In the advanced Boolean syntax, for example, it is possible to do subject, keyword, and full text queries (among others) that are not defined in the OpenURL syntax.

The advanced Boolean syntax uses two parameters on the URL:

1. prod=X,Y,…Z
The prod= parameter lists the database ID(s) you want to search. Separate multiple databases by comma, each database ID must be in upper case. The valid IDs are listed at the end of this document.

2. query=
The query= parameter defines the Boolean query operation. The syntax is defined below. Like any URL, the special characters must be URL-encoded. To improve readability, the syntax is shown here without URL-encoding. The operators are shown in the examples bracketed by < and >; these brackets must be used around each operator.

Query Syntax

1. Simple queries specify a word or phrase to search in free text
   a. word
   b. word list
   c. “word phrase”

2. Booleans operators are <and>, <or>, and <not>.
   a. word1 <and> word2
   b. word1 <or> word2
   c. word1 <not> word2

3. Parentheses may be used to group sub-expressions and control the order of evaluation.
   (word1 <or> word2) <and> word3

4. Keyword field searches use syntax like the example below. The field names use the short 2-4 letter field name abbreviations listed in each product’s help section.
   a. word <in> FLD
   b. (word,list,…) <in> (FLD1,FLD2,…)
   c. “word phrase” <in> FLD

5. Proximity operations use the <near> or <near/n> operator
   a. <near>(word1, word2) <in> FLD
   b. <near/3>(word1,word2) <in> FLD

6. Use the <order> modifier to request the words in the specified order
   <order><near>(word1, word2) <in> FLD

7. Use * to signify truncation on the right
   word* <in> FLD

8. Use ? to signify a wildcard character
   w?rd <in> FLD

9. Relational operators can be used to do field equality or inequality searches. In this case, the field name comes first.
   a. FLD=value (equality)
   b. FLD>value (greater than)
   c. FLD>=value (greater than or equal to)
   d. FLD<value (less than)
   e. FLD<=value (less than or equal to)
   f. FLD!=value (not equal to)
   g. FLD>=valuelo <and> FLD<=valuehi (range search)

10. To search for words that are used as operators, surround them with quotes
    Health ‘and’ safety <in> SU

11. The documentation above covers the syntax basics. Other operators are also available. Consult the WilsonWeb help pages for other supported operators, and the database descriptions for examples of how to search each available field.

URL Encoding of Special Characters

The following table shows the URL encoding of the 13 special characters that are used in the query syntax.

 
URL Encoded examples
“mad cow disease” <in> kw
http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?prod=OMNIFT
&query=%22mad+cow+disease%22+%3Cin%3E+kw

(cat <or> dog) <in> kw
http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/jumpstart.jhtml?prod=OMNIFT
&query=%28cat+%3Cor%3E+dog%29+%3Cin%3E+kw

Journal Directory Linking

Customers who wish to link their OPACs or other Journal Title systems to the WilsonWeb Journal Directory may issue a query URL with the desired Product name and ISSN to obtain the list of issues that are indexed for that journal in that product. The issues list will show the article counts for each indexed issue in reverse chronological order. Each issue is linked to WilsonWeb to enable easy retrieval of all the indexed articles for a desired issue.

The syntax for the Journal Directory links is outlined below. The product selection is done using the SID parameter, in this case the product OMNI FT is selected. To conform to the OpenURL syntax, the format of the SID parameter is SID=HWW:<product URL name list>.

This URL will search the Journal Directory for a given ISSN in OMNIFT and return a list of indexed issues:

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/Journals/searchAction.jhtml?sid=HWW:OMNIFT&issn=0738-4602

The getIssues.jhtml URL will search the Journal Directory for a journal and will show only those issues from a desired volume (or an individual issue)

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/Journals/getIssues.jhtml?sid=HWW:OMNIFT&issn=0738-4602&volume=23

To receive a single issue, add the issue parameter:

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/Journals/getIssues.jhtml?sid=HWW:OMNIFT&issn=0738-4602&volume=23&issue=2

Note on Article Links: the issues listed by any of the above URLs will be linked to WilsonWeb to permit retrieval of the articles for that issue. These links require an active subscription to the requested product to see the list of articles. The article links use the jumpstart.jhtml target syntax described in the Remote Query section of this document. Customers who use automatic login via TCP/IP address can see the articles without a login step required. For all customers that do not have automatic login, the article retrieval links will result in WilsonWeb requesting a username and password via a login form. Customers who do not have automatic login via TCP/IP address can bypass the login form using one of two methods:

1. Store your site’s WilsonWeb username and password on the user’s workstation in a cookie using the administration feature for ‘Configure Terminal’ described in section 4 of the administrator documentation.

2. Add the parameters un=[userid]&pw=[password] to the Journal Directory search URL. Although access to the Journal Directory does not require a username and password, access to lists of articles requires a valid WilsonWeb subscription to the product in which the journal is indexed. If un= and pw= are supplied on the journal search URL, these will be appended to the article links to permit automatic login for the article links.

XML Document Retrieval

XML document retrieval uses the following URL and syntax. The base URL points to a servlet called “getRecord.jhtml”. The query string consists of two parameters, "prod" and 'recid." Prod is a short character name from the list of WilsonWeb products at the end of this document. Recid is the 15-digit accession number for the desired item.

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/getRecord.jhtml?prod=ASTFT&recid=200133502505004

Alternatively, the sid=HWW:<productName> parameter can be used in place of "prod," as in this example:

http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/getRecord.jhtml?sid=HWW:ASTFT&recid=199627500425014

The WilsonWeb server performs a security check on these URLs so that the machine sending the http request must have its TCP/IP address or its referring site registered in the authentication database.

Only individual items may be obtained using the getRecord servlet. The XML returned is subject to change. The primary purpose for supporting XML document retrieval is to permit discovery of metadata elements that are not defined by the OpenURL link syntax. Since XML document retrieval requires knowledge of the record accession number, WilsonWeb provides the accession number in OpenURL source links produced within WilsonWeb. See the documentation for OpenURL source links in WilsonWeb for further information.

Product IDs

 
OpenURL* — Y indicates that items in the product can be retrieved using the standard metadata elements of the OpenURL. The OpenURL does not define syntax for genres such as "person," "art object," or "fact" and so products that contain metadata for these genres are not yet searchable using the OpenUrl query syntax.