[moby] [MOBY-dev] Re: Problems with Biomoby services in Taverna 1.2

[Dirk Haase]

On Friday 08 July 2005 08:45, Heiko Schoof wrote:
> Well, if I understand you correctly, Mark, than I was right all along
> in that they way I see collections is the way they should be seen. Then
> the problem is that that is not clear enough to everybody else, and
> that possibly the examples in the API are misleading, because it's been
> used in such a different way. It's definitely something that needs to
> be fixed before release 1.0.

Not only the examples are misleading, actually at least the PERL API is 
lacking a suitable method to construct an output consisting of several 
'Simple's. One can not simply concat the output of multibple 'simpleResponse' 
calls, as this would create several mobyData blocks.

In order to fill this gap, I created a new method 'multiSimpleResponse' (see 
below) within CommonSubs.pm which is more or less identical to 
'collectionResponse' except that it obviously leaves out the moby:Collection 
tag. The provided articleName is put into each 'Simple' tag which should be 
appropriate.

Any objections?

Regards,
dirk

=head2 multiSimpleResponse

 name     : multiSimpleResponse
 function : wraps a set of simple articles in the appropriate mobyData 
structure
 usage    : return responseHeader . &multiSimpleResponse(\@objects, 
'MyArticleName', $queryID) . responseFooter;
 args     : (in order)
            \@objects - (optional) a listref of MOBY Objects as raw XML
            $article  - (optional) an articeName for this article
            $queryID  - (optional, but strongly recommended) the mobyData ID
                        to which you are responding
 notes    : as required by the API you must return a response for every input.
            If one of the inputs was invalid, you return a valid (empty) MOBY
            response by calling &multiSimpleResponse(undef, undef, $queryID).

=cut


sub multiSimpleResponse {
        my ( $data, $articleName, $qID ) = @_;    # articleName optional
        my $content = "";
        $data ||= [];
        $qID  ||= '';
        $articleName ||="";
        unless ( ( ref( $data ) =~ /array/i ) && $data->[0] )
        {    # we're expecting an arrayref as input data,and it must not be 
empty
                return "<moby:mobyData moby:queryID='$qID'/>";
        }
        foreach ( @{$data} ) {
                if ( $_ ) {
                        $content .= "
                <moby:Simple articleName='$articleName'>$_</moby:Simple>
            ";
                } else {
                        $content .= "
                <moby:Simple/>
            ";
                }
        }
        return "
        <moby:mobyData moby:queryID='$qID'>
                $content
        </moby:mobyData>
        ";
}