[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Checking for Broken URLs in Resources

Wed Feb 10 20:26:32 EST 2021

Corey,

The process Kevin mentioned is in our repo here:

https://github.com/cul/rbml-archivesspace/tree/master/ead_link_checker

I think this is a few steps short of what you have in mind but maybe it
will give you some code snippets to adapt. As Kevin mentioned, we have our
entire corpus exported to EAD daily to back our publishing platform, so it
makes an easy source to mine data via XSLT. Given a folder of EAD, the XSLT
pulls out the xlink info, and the Python script does status checks and
reports the results to a spreadsheet. As we have many links to dois and
resolvers, the redirect locations and status checks were useful. We did
this as a one-time audit rather than a continuous monitor, but I could see
how one might automate a link checker to report problems as they come up.

I'd be happy to discuss further if it is helpful. Best of luck!

David

On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 10:44 AM Corey Schmidt <Corey.Schmidt at uga.edu>
wrote:

> Kevin,
>
> I'd be very interested to get your code, especially with 301 and 302
> redirects. My initial runs have resulted in redirects stalling the status
> code response, preventing my program from moving forward. Getting the
> status code of the link being redirected to would be a big help.
>
> I should also mention that any solution I make needs to be replicable to
> other faculty/staff in our library - so access to the database may not be
> consistent in the future. I'm thinking of a scenario where 5 years from
> now, some people may want to run this report again but I may not be working
> for the library anymore. If that's the case, working to export from
> ArchivesSpace might be the better long-term, no-fusses solution.
>
> Corey
> ------------------------------
> *From:* archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org <
> archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org> on behalf of
> Kevin W. Schlottmann <kws2126 at columbia.edu>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 10, 2021 10:27 AM
> *To:* Archivesspace Users Group <
> archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Checking for Broken URLs in
> Resources
>
> [EXTERNAL SENDER - PROCEED CAUTIOUSLY]
>
> Hi Corey,
>
> Earlier this year we did something similar. We started by extracting all
> xlink:href from the EAD corpus using xslt. (EAD is our go-to data source
> since we always have a constantly updated set, as we use them to
> automatically publish our finding aids.) We did not do an additional regex
> search for non-encoded URLs, but that's not a bad idea.  The result was
> over 15,000 links.  Each was recorded with bibid, container id (if any),
> and link text and title (if any). To check them, my colleague ran them
> through a Python script to get the response code, and if the response was
> 301/302, retrieve the redirect location and secondary response. This
> produced some interesting results, and resulted in a fair amount of
> remediation work to do.
>
> If this sounds on point, I can try to find and share the code we used.
>
> Kevin
>
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 9:34 AM Corey Schmidt <Corey.Schmidt at uga.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Nancy,
>
> I have access to our staging database, but not production. I'm not sure
> our sysadmins will allow me to play around in the prod database, unless
> they can assign me read only maybe? Pulling the file_uri values for
> file_version would be much more efficient. However, I'm not just looking to
> check digital object links, but also any links found within collection and
> archival object level notes, either copied straight into the text of the
> notes or linked using the <extref> tag. I could probably query the database
> for that info too.
>
> Corey
> ------------------------------
> *From:* archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org <
> archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org> on behalf of
> Kennedy, Nancy <KennedyN at si.edu>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 10, 2021 9:18 AM
> *To:* Archivesspace Users Group <
> archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Checking for Broken URLs in
> Resources
>
> [EXTERNAL SENDER - PROCEED CAUTIOUSLY]
>
> Hi Corey –
>
> Do you have access to query the database, as a starting point, instead of
> EAD?  We were able to pull the file_uri values from the file_version table
> in the database.  Our sysadmin then checked the response codes for that
> list of URI, and we referred issues out to staff working on those
> collections.  Some corrections can be made directly by staff, or for long
> lists, you could include the digital_object id and post updates that way.
>
>
>
> Nancy
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org <
> archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org> *On Behalf Of *Corey
> Schmidt
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 10, 2021 8:45 AM
> *To:* archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org
> *Subject:* [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Checking for Broken URLs in
> Resources
>
>
>
> *External Email - Exercise Caution*
>
> Dear all,
>
>
> Hello, this is Corey Schmidt, ArchivesSpace PM at the University of
> Georgia. I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe and healthy.
>
> Would anyone know of any script, plugin, or tool to check for invalid URLs
> within resources? We are investigating how to grab URLs from exported
> EAD.xml files and check them to determine if they throw back any sort of
> error (404s mostly, but also any others). My thinking is to build a small
> app that will export EAD.xml files from ArchivesSpace, then sift through
> the raw xml using python's lxml package to catch any URLs using regex.
> After capturing the URL, it would then use the requests library to check
> the status code of the URL and if it returns an error, log that error in a
> .CSV output file to act as a "report" of all the broken links within that
> resource.
>
> The problems with this method are: 1. Exporting 1000s of resources takes a
> lot of time and some processing power, as well as a moderate amount of
> local storage space. 2. Even checking the raw xml file takes a considerable
> amount of time. The app I'm working on takes overnight to export and check
> all the xml files. I was considering pinging the API for different parts of
> a resource, but I figured that would take as much time as just exporting an
> EAD.xml and would be even more complex to write. I've checked Awesome
> ArchivesSpace, this listserv, and a few script libraries from institutions,
> but haven't found exactly what I am looking for.
>
> Any info or advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Corey
>
>
>
> Corey Schmidt
>
> ArchivesSpace Project Manager
>
> University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries
>
> *Email:* Corey.Schmidt at uga.edu
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>
>
> --
> Kevin Schlottmann
> Interim Director and Head of Archives Processing
> Rare Book & Manuscript Library
> Butler Library, Room 801
> Columbia University
> 535 W. 114th St., New York, NY  10027
> (212) 854-8483
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-- 
David W. Hodges
Special Collections Analyst
Columbia University Libraries
Butler Library
535 West 114th St.
New York, NY 10027
212 854-8758
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