Items Endpoints

Back to the list of all defined endpoints

Main Endpoint

/api/core/items

Provide access to the items (DBMS based). This endpoint is reserved to the administrators the common practice is to navigate to the single items via a discovery search or browse.

Currently, this endpoint only returns "archived" items which are NOT withdrawn. However, withdrawn items and Workspace/Workflow items are findable via search endpoints. Template items are findable via the corresponding collection. In the future, this endpoint is likely to be updated to include all items, regardless of status, see DSpace/DSpace#3325

Example: https://demo.dspace.org/server/#/server/api/core/items

Single Item

/api/core/items/<:uuid>

⚠️ In the below example response, the existence of the place field for specific metadata values is still under analysis. We are determining whether it can be removed entirely in favor of using the array index (as the place field represents the index of each value in an ordered array). For more details see Github issue DSpace/DSpace#7582

Provide detailed information about a specific item. The JSON response document is as follow

{
  "uuid": "1911e8a4-6939-490c-b58b-a5d70f8d91fb",
  "name": "Practices of research data curation in institutional repositories: A qualitative view from repository staff",
  "handle": "10673/20",
  "metadata": {
    "dc.contributor.author": [
      {
        "value": "Stvilia, Besiki",
        "language": "en",
        "authority": null,
        "confidence": -1,
        "place": 0
      },
      {
        "value": "Lee, Dong Joon",
        "language": "en",
        "authority": null,
        "confidence": -1,
        "place": 1
      }
    ],
    "dc.identifier.url": [
      {
        "value": "http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/28301533",
        "language": "en",
        "authority": null,
        "confidence": -1,
        "place": 0
      }
    ],
    "dc.title": [
      {
        "value": "Practices of research data curation in institutional repositories: A qualitative view from repository staff",
        "language": "en",
        "authority": null,
        "confidence": -1,
        "place": 0
      }
    ],
    "dc.type": [
      {
        "value": "Journal Article",
        "language": "en",
        "authority": null,
        "confidence": -1,
        "place": 0
      }
    ]
  },
  "inArchive": true,
  "discoverable": true,
  "withdrawn": false,
  "lastModified": "2017-06-24T00:40:54.970+0000",
  "type": "item"
}

Item properties:

handle: the handle identifier assigned to the item, if any
metadata: a map of all the item's metadata where the metadata field is used to build the key in the form of .[.<qualifier] and the values are an ordered list of metadata values. Administrative metadata, such as dc.description.provenance can be filtered out and available only to administrators according to the system configuration, see metadata.hide.* properties in the dspace.cfg file. For withdrawn items the actual metadata are only shown to administrators, all the other users will get an empty property
inArchive: it will be true only for items that have been successful deposited in the repository and have passed all, if any, the defined workflow steps. For item related to workspaceitem, workflowitem or template items this attribute will stay at false
discoverable: true if the item is expected to be findable trough a search or browse by authorized user
withdrawn: true it the item has been retired from the repository

Exposed links:

bundles: list of bundles within the item
owningCollection: the collection where the item belong to
mappedCollections: the collections where the item is mapped to
templateItemOf: the collection that have the item as template
relationships: the relationships to other items
thumbnail: the main thumbnail of the item

Status codes:

200 OK - if the item is found and it is visible to the current user or the anonymous user. Withdrawn items are returned
401 Unauthorized - if you are not authenticated and the item is not visible to anonymous users
403 Forbidden - if you are not logged in with sufficient permissions. Please note that withdrawn items are visible to everyone without any metadata details
404 Not found - if the item doesn't exist

Withdrawn item

A withdrawn item is a normal item that has been retired from the repository using a patch operation as described below. Once withdrawn the response will show an empty metadata section to everyone except than administrators.

{
   "id":"e45a63a2-3db2-47fa-824e-3e4fdfae94f1",
   "uuid":"e45a63a2-3db2-47fa-824e-3e4fdfae94f1",
   "name":"Public item 1",
   "handle":"123456789/3",
   "metadata":{
   },
   "inArchive":false,
   "discoverable":true,
   "withdrawn":true,
   "lastModified":"2021-06-21T12:53:57.871+00:00",
   "entityType":null,
   "type":"item",
   "_links":{
       ...
   }
}

Creating an archived item

POST /api/core/items?owningCollection=<:uuid>

Administrators can directly create an archived item (bypassing the workflow). The content-type is JSON. An example JSON can be seen below:

{
  "name": "Practices of research data curation in institutional repositories: A qualitative view from repository staff",
  "metadata": {
    "dc.contributor.author": [
      {
        "value": "Stvilia, Besiki",
        "language": "en",
        "authority": null,
        "confidence": -1
      }
    ],
    "dc.title": [
      {
        "value": "Practices of research data curation in institutional repositories: A qualitative view from repository staff",
        "language": "en",
        "authority": null,
        "confidence": -1
      }
    ],
    "dc.type": [
      {
        "value": "Journal Article",
        "language": "en",
        "authority": null,
        "confidence": -1
      }
    ]
  },
  "inArchive": true,
  "discoverable": true,
  "withdrawn": false,
  "type": "item"
}

Creating an archived item from an external source

POST /api/core/items?owningCollection=<:uuid>

Administrators can directly create an archived item (bypassing the workflow) from an external source. The content-type is uri-list.

The URI-list should contain the external entry value whose metadata should be imported

An example curl call:

 curl -i -X POST https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/items?owningCollection=1c11f3f1-ba1f-4f36-908a-3f1ea9a557eb \
 -H "Content-Type:text/uri-list" \
 --data "https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/integration/externalsources/orcid/entryValues/0000-0002-4271-0436"

Only one external entry value should be present. If multiple external entry values are present, a 400 bad request will be thrown

Updating item metadata

PUT /api/core/items/<:uuid>

Provide updated metadata information for an item, when the update is completed the updated object will be returned. The JSON to update can be found below.

{
  "uuid": "a8ba963f-d9c9-4198-b5a4-3f74e2ab6fb9",
  "handle": "123456789/60636",
  "metadata": {
    "dc.contributor.author": [
      {
        "value": "Velasco, Mercedes",
        "language": "en",
        "authority": null,
        "confidence": -1
      }
    ],
    "dc.title": [
      {
        "value": "Test new title",
        "language": "pt_BR",
        "authority": null,
        "confidence": -1
      }
    ]
  },
  "type": "item"
}

Patch operations

Item metadata can be modified as described in Modifying metadata via Patch.

Additional properties can be modified via Patch as described below.

Replace

The replace operation allows to replace existent information with new one. Attempt to use the replace operation to set not yet initialized information must return an error. See general errors on PATCH requests

To withdraw an item, curl --data '[ { "op": "replace", "path": "/withdrawn", "value": true}]' -H "Authorization: Bearer ..." -H "content-type: application/json" -X PATCH ${dspace7-url}/api/core/items/${item-uuid}. The withdraw operation also requires an Authorization header.

For example, starting with the following item data:

 "inArchive": true,
  "discoverable": true,
  "withdrawn": false,
  "lastModified": "2018-05-17T16:53:15.250+0000",
  "type": "item"

the withdraw operation will result in:

  "inArchive": false,
  "discoverable": true,
  "withdrawn": true,
  "lastModified": "2018-05-17T16:53:15.250+0000",
  "type": "item"

To reinstate an item, curl --data '[ { "op": "replace", "path": "/withdrawn", "value": false}]' -H "Authorization: Bearer ..." -H "content-type: application/json" -X PATCH ${dspace7-url}/api/core/items/${item-uuid}. The reinstate operation also requires an Authorization header.

For example, starting with the following item data:

 "inArchive": false,
  "discoverable": true,
  "withdrawn": true,
  "lastModified": "2018-05-17T16:53:15.250+0000",
  "type": "item"

the reinstate operation will result in:

  "inArchive": true,
  "discoverable": true,
  "withdrawn": false,
  "lastModified": "2018-05-17T16:53:15.250+0000",
  "type": "item"

To make an item private (or discoverable), curl --data '[ { "op": "replace", "path": "/discoverable", "value": false}]' -H "Authorization: Bearer ..." -H "content-type: application/json" -X PATCH ${dspace7-url}/api/core/items/${item-uuid}. The discoverable operation also requires an Authorization header.

For example, starting with the following item data:

  "inArchive": true,
  "discoverable": true,
  "withdrawn": false,
  "lastModified": "2018-05-17T16:53:15.250+0000",
  "type": "item"

the discoverable operation will result in:

  "inArchive": true,
  "discoverable": false,
  "withdrawn": false,
  "lastModified": "2018-05-17T16:53:15.250+0000",
  "type": "item"

Linked entities

Access Status

GET /api/core/items/<:uuid>/accessStatus

This endpoint expose the mechanism for retrieving and calculating the access status of a DSpace item. It can be checked by calling this endpoint with the the corresponding item UUID.

curl -v "http://{dspace-server.url}/api/core/items/2245f2c5-1bed-414b-a313-3fd2d2ec89d6/accessStatus"

This will return the access status, E.G.:

200 - Response if the UUID parameter is valid

{
  "status": "metadata.only",
  "type": "accessStatus",
  "_links" : {
    "self" : {
      "href" : "http://{dspace-server.url}/api/core/items/2245f2c5-1bed-414b-a313-3fd2d2ec89d6/accessStatus"
    }
  }
}

Fields

Status: String value if the UUID is valid
Type: Type of the endpoint, "accessStatus" in this case

Exposed links:

self: The valid URL to the item's access status

Default access status values

metadata.only = Item doesn't contain a primary file
open.access = Item's primary file is downloadable to anonymous users
embargo = Item's primary file is under an embargo
restricted = Item's primary file is not downloadable to anonymous users
unknown = Item's status is indeterminable or unknown

Note: the calculation of those default values is based on the policies of the item's primary file. The term primary file also refers to the first file in the original bundle if no primary file is defined.

Return code

200 Ok if the parameter is a valid item UUID
400 Bad Request if the parameter is invalid
404 Not Found if the item cannot be retrieved

Bundles

GET /api/core/items/<:uuid>/bundles

Example: https://demo.dspace.org/server/#https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/items/1911e8a4-6939-490c-b58b-a5d70f8d91fb/bundles

It returns the bundles within this item. See the bundle endpoint for more info

{
  "bundles" : [
  {
    "uuid": "d3599177-0408-403b-9f8d-d300edd79edb",
    "name": "ORIGINAL",
    "handle": null,
    "metadata": {},
    "type": "bundle",
    "_links" : {
      "primarybitstream" : {
        "href" : "https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/ac49f361-4ffd-47a4-8eb2-e6c73c3f3e76"
      },
      "bitstreams" : {
        "href" : "https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/bundles/d3599177-0408-403b-9f8d-d300edd79edb/bitstreams"
      },
      "self" : {
        "href" : "https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/bundles/d3599177-0408-403b-9f8d-d300edd79edb"
      }
    }
  },
  {
    "uuid": "d3599177-0408-403b-9f8d-d300edd79edb",
    "name": "THUMBNAIL",
    "handle": null,
    "metadata": {},
    "type": "bundle",
    "_links" : {
      "primarybitstream" : {
        "href" : "https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/ac49f361-4ffd-47a4-8eb2-e6c73c3f3e76"
      },
      "bitstreams" : {
        "href" : "https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/bundles/d3599177-0408-403b-9f8d-d300edd79edb/bitstreams"
      },
      "self" : {
        "href" : "https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/bundles/d3599177-0408-403b-9f8d-d300edd79edb"
      }
    }
  }
  ]
}

This endpoint is relevant to:

Retrieve only the bitstreams from a given bundle from an item (e.g. only the thumbnails)
Retrieve or update the order of the bitstreams in a bundle

POST /api/core/items/<:uuid>/bundles

Example: https://demo.dspace.org/server/#https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/items/1911e8a4-6939-490c-b58b-a5d70f8d91fb/bundles

Creating a new bundle in an item would use JSON similar to the example below:

{
  "name": "ORIGINAL",
  "metadata": {}
}

It returns the created bundle.

If a bundle with the given doesn't exist yet in the item, it will be created

Status codes:

201 Created - if the operation succeed
400 Bad Request - if the bundle name already exists in the item
401 Unauthorized - if you are not authenticated
403 Forbidden - if you are not logged in with sufficient permissions
404 Not found - if the item doesn't exist
412 Precondition Failed - if there is a discrepancy between the declared size or checksum and the computed one

Owning Collection

/api/core/items/<:uuid>/owningCollection

Example: https://demo.dspace.org/server/#https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/items/1911e8a4-6939-490c-b58b-a5d70f8d91fb/owningCollection

It returns the collection where the item belong to

PUT /api/core/items/<:uuid>/owningCollection

The actual collection is part of the body using the uri-list. Note that if the parameter inheritPolicies=true is passed in the request, the item will inherit the policies of the target owning collection.

Example:

curl -i -X PUT "https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/items/1911e8a4-6939-490c-b58b-a5d70f8d91fb/owningCollection" -H "Content-Type:text/uri-list" -d "https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/collections/8e0928a0-047a-4369-8883-12669f32dd64"

It updates the owning collection (moves the item).

Status codes:

204 No content - if the operation succeeded
401 Unauthorized - if you are not authenticated
403 Forbidden - if you are not logged in with sufficient permissions
404 Not found - if the item doesn't exist

Mapped Collections

GET /api/core/items/<:uuid>/mappedCollections

It returns all the mapped collections the item is included in.

On the item page, it should be referenced similar to:

    "mappedCollections": {
      "href": "https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/items/95e5d7d9-ef4e-4e35-86cc-07bfe2f0e355/mappedCollections"
    }

GET /api/core/items/<:uuid>/mappedCollections/<:collection_uuid>

Unsupported. If you want detailed information about a single mapped collection, use the /api/core/collections/<collection:uuid> endpoint.

POST /api/core/items/<:uuid>/mappedCollections

A POST request will result in creating a new mapping between the item and collection. If the collection exists and is neither the owning nor mapped collection for the item, the relation should be created.

 curl -i -X POST https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/items/1911e8a4-6939-490c-b58b-a5d70f8d91fb/mappedCollections 
 -H "Content-Type:text/uri-list" --data "https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/collections/1c11f3f1-ba1f-4f36-908a-3f1ea9a557eb"

The collection(s) MUST be included in the body using the text/uri-list content type

Return codes:

204: if the update succeeded (including the case of no-op if the mapping was already as requested)
401 Unauthorized - if you are not authenticated
403 Forbidden - if you are not logged in with sufficient permissions
405: if the item is a template item
422: if the specified collection is not found or is the owningCollection of the item

PUT /api/core/items/<:uuid>/mappedCollections

Unsupported. You may replace or update mapped collections using DELETE requests and/or POST requests.

DELETE /api/core/items/<:uuid>/mappedCollections

Unsupported. At this time, we do not support removing all mapped Collections in a single request. Please use DELETE /api/core/items/<:uuid>/mappedCollections/<:collection_uuid> to remove mapped Collections one by one.

DELETE /api/core/items/<:uuid>/mappedCollections/<:collection_uuid>

A DELETE request will result in removing an existing mapping between the item and collection. If the collection exists and is a mapped collection for the item, the relation should be deleted.

 curl -i -X DELETE https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/items/1911e8a4-6939-490c-b58b-a5d70f8d91fb/mappedCollections/1c11f3f1-ba1f-4f36-908a-3f1ea9a557eb"

The above request would remove the mapping between Collection with UUID 1c11f3f1-ba1f-4f36-908a-3f1ea9a557eb and Item with UUID 1911e8a4-6939-490c-b58b-a5d70f8d91fb.

Return codes:

204: if the delete succeeded (including the case of no-op if the collection was not mapped)
401 Unauthorized - if you are not authenticated
403 Forbidden - if you are not logged in with sufficient permissions
405: if the item is a template item
422: if the specified collection is not found or is the owningCollection of the item

Template Item

/api/core/items/<:uuid>/templateItemOf

Example: to be provided

It returns the collection that have the item as template

Relationships per item

/api/core/items/<:uuid>/relationships

A sample can be found at https://demo.dspace.org/#https://demo.dspace.org/server/api/core/items/5a3f7c7a-d3df-419c-b8a2-f00ede62c60a/relationships

It embeds all relationships where either the left or the right item matches the given uuid

Main Thumbnail

/api/core/items/<:uuid>/thumbnail

It returns the bitstream which represents the main thumbnail of the item

Status codes:

200 OK - returning the thumbnail
204 No Content - if there is no thumbnail for the specified item
401 Unauthorized - if you are not authenticated and don't have permissions on the item or the thumbnail's metadata
403 Forbidden - if you are not logged in with sufficient permissions
404 Not found - if the item doesn't exist

Get single version for item

GET /api/core/items/{:item-uuid}/version

Provide version information based on a given Item UUID. An Item UUID will only match one version. READ permissions over the item in addition to the version permissions are checked. The JSON response is the same as the Version endpoint.

Return codes:

200 OK - if the operation succeeds
401 Unauthorized - if you are not authenticated and versioning is not public
403 Forbidden - if you are not logged in with sufficient permissions and versioning is not public
204 No Content - if the specified item is not yet versioned
400 Bad Request - if the item id param is missing or invalid (not an uuid)

Get item identifiers

GET /api/core/items/{:item-uuid}/identifiers

Returns information about the identifiers associated with this item, for example Handle and DOI URIs. If relevant, the status of the identifier is also included.

The JSON response is formatted like the example below (the same data model as the identifiers submission step).

{
  "identifiers" : [ {
    "value" : "https://doi.org/10.33515/dspace-61",
    "identifierType" : "doi",
    "identifierStatus" : "TO_BE_REGISTERED",
    "type" : "identifier"
  }, {
    "value" : "123456789/418",
    "identifierType" : "handle",
    "identifierStatus" : null,
    "type" : "identifier"
  } ],
  "type" : "identifiers",
  "_links" : {
    "self" : {
      "href" : "http://localhost:8080/server/api/core/items/6bea2772-0e71-4636-8c1c-5c132821fa2c/identifiers"
    }
  }
}

Return codes:

200 OK - if the operation succeeds
400 Bad Request - if the item id param is missing or invalid (not an uuid)
401 Unauthorized - if you are not authenticated and versioning is not public
403 Forbidden - if you are not logged in with sufficient permissions and versioning is not public
404 Not found - if the item doesn't exist

Get Item Submitter

/api/core/items/<:uuid>/submitter

It returns the submitter of the item

Status codes:

200 OK - returning the submitter
204 No Content - if you are not authenticated or you have no read access on that submitter.
404 Not found - if the item doesn't exist

Deleting an item

DELETE /api/core/items/<:uuid>

Delete an item.

An optional parameter for copying virtual metadata to actual metadata in the related items can be included (only authorized by admins): copyVirtualMetadata. This can contain values:

all (all relationships are verified, and the virtual metadata in all related items is migrated to actual metadata)
relationship type ID: only relationship types with the given ID(s) are migrated. The copyVirtualMetadata can be included multiple times to support multiple IDs
configured: the behavior will be retrieved from a configuration parameter
not specified: no virtual metadata is expanded to actual metadata

Return codes:

204 No content - if the operation succeed
401 Unauthorized - if you are not authenticated
403 Forbidden - if you are not logged in with sufficient permissions
404 Not found - if the item doesn't exist (or was already deleted)

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items.md

items.md

Items Endpoints

Main Endpoint

Single Item

Withdrawn item

Creating an archived item

Creating an archived item from an external source

Updating item metadata

Patch operations

Replace

Linked entities

Access Status

Bundles

Owning Collection

Mapped Collections

Template Item

Relationships per item

Main Thumbnail

Get single version for item

Get item identifiers

Get Item Submitter

Deleting an item

Files

items.md

Latest commit

History

items.md

File metadata and controls

Items Endpoints

Main Endpoint

Single Item

Withdrawn item

Creating an archived item

Creating an archived item from an external source

Updating item metadata

Patch operations

Replace

Linked entities

Access Status

Bundles

Owning Collection

Mapped Collections

Template Item

Relationships per item

Main Thumbnail

Get single version for item

Get item identifiers

Get Item Submitter

Deleting an item