Metadata Editor for Research Data 🔬

A Nextcloud app to annotate a research data folder with metadata

Features

• add metadata as a JSON file ( metadata.json) for a folder with scientific data from within the Nextcloud file browser
• enter and edit metadata through web-forms
• the metadata schema is specified as a JSON Schema, which can be used for validating the input data or creating a data model, e.g. in a database
• currently the schema is based on the metadata schema of the data publisher PANGAEA with input fields for
  • 👨‍🔬👩‍🔬 authors
  • 🧪🔎 sampling/measurement events
  • 🚢🛩 campaigns
  • 🩸🧬 method information

To install the app, copy the folder into the apps subfolder of the Nextcloud folder and activate the app in the admin interface.

Development

The app is inspired by the Nextcloud plain text editor and registers fileActions in the files app. The Javascript part of the app is based on the React components provided by JSONForms, which render the input forms based on the JSON Schema.

Documentation on how to develop Nextcloud apps can be found in the Nextcloud developer documentation

Developing React input forms

Before working on the Javascript part of the app, npm packages have to be installed with

  npm install

The component for entering the data can be developed without a running Nextcloud server using

  npm start

and opening the development server at https://localhost:8080. To build a deployable Javascript bundle in js/ use

  npm run dev

for a non-minified development version or

    npm run build

for a minified production build.