https links in metadata are not included in ISO XSLTs

KarenMajewicz — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 22:23:30 GMT

I wanted to share an issue / bug that I discovered. I am involved in editing metadata and exporting to XML files in the ISO format. I noticed a problem: ArcCatalog does not fully incorporate Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) addresses. It will save them in an ArcGIS 1.0 metadata format file, but will not export them to ISO.

If you go into the program files and find {ARCGIS_INSTALL_PATH}\Metadata\Translator\Transforms\ArcGIS2ISO19139.xsl and go to line 3422, you will find:

<xsl:for-each select="onLineSrc[(starts-with(linkage,'http://') or starts-with(linkage,'ftp://')) and ((count(.//*[text()]) - count(./orDesc[starts-with(.,'0')])) > 0)]">

Note that ArcCatalog is only looking for links that start with http:// or ftp://. You would have to manually edit this XSLT and add or starts-with(linkage,'https://') in order for https links to be included in the export.

On a related note, the display of a standalone ISO file in ArcCatalog uses a template, and https links do not get displayed as a clickable hyperlink. Again, the XSLT for this doesn't include this protocol.

Find line 430 in {ARCGIS_INSTALL_PATH}\Metadata\Stylesheets\ArcGIS_Imports\general.xslt

Note that https is not included. <xsl:when test="(substring($value,1,7) = 'http://') or (substring($value,1,7) = 'HTTP://') or (substring($value,1,6) = 'ftp://') or (substring($value,1,6) = 'FTP://')"><a target="_blank">

topic https links in metadata are not included in ISO XSLTs in Standards and Interoperability Questions

https links in metadata are not included in ISO XSLTs