arcp (Archive and Package) URI Python library

Indices and tables

arcp provides functions for creating arcp URIs, which can be used for identifying or parsing hypermedia files packaged in an archive or package, like a ZIP file.

arcp URIs can be used to consume or reference hypermedia resources bundled inside a file archive or an application package, as well as to resolve URIs for archive resources within a programmatic framework.

This URI scheme provides mechanisms to generate a unique base URI to represent the root of the archive, so that relative URI references in a bundled resource can be resolved within the archive without having to extract the archive content on the local file system.

An arcp URI can be used for purposes of isolation (e.g. when consuming multiple archives), security constraints (avoiding “climb out” from the archive), or for externally identiyfing sub-resources referenced by hypermedia formats.

Examples:
  • arcp://uuid,32a423d6-52ab-47e3-a9cd-54f418a48571/doc.html
  • arcp://uuid,b7749d0b-0e47-5fc4-999d-f154abe68065/pics/
  • arcp://ni,sha-256;F-34D4TUeOfG0selz7REKRDo4XePkewPeQYtjL3vQs0/
  • arcp://name,gallery.example.org/

The different forms of URI authority in arcp URIs can be used depending on which uniqueness constraints to apply when addressing an archive. See the arcp specification (draft-soilandreyes-arcp) for details.

Note that this library only provides mechanisms to generate and parse arcp URIs, and do not integrate with any particular archive or URL handling modules like zipfile or urllib.request.

License

© 2018-2020 Stian Soiland-Reyes <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718>, The University of Manchester, UK

Licensed under the Apache License, version 2.0 <https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0>.

Source code and contributing

Source code: <https://github.com/stain/arcp-py>

Feel free to raise a pull request at <https://github.com/stain/arcp-py/pulls> or an issue at <https://github.com/stain/arcp-py/issues>.

Installing

You will need Python 2.7, Python 3.4 or later (Recommended: 3.6).

If you have pip, then the easiest is normally to install from <https://pypi.org/project/arcp/> using:

pip install arcp

If you want to install manually from this code base, then try:

python setup.py install