How to use the ALOA Web Service API

1. Download this jar file. This jar contains the ALOA Web Service API.
2. Download the jar files "axis-1.4.jar, axis-jaxrpc-1.4.jar, axis-saaj-1.4.jar, axis-wsdl4j-1.5.1.jar, commons-logging-1.1.jar, commons-discovery-0.2.jar" from the Apache Axis page.
3. Download the jar file "castor-1.1-M2.jar" from the Castor project page.
4. The API is very straightforward, this is an example of what you can do:

   
   // sets the learning object source
   
   // We assume here that we want to generate metadata from
   // "http://www-i5.informatik.rwth-aachen.de"
   // ALOA can also generate metadata from other file types
   // e.g. pdf, ppt, word, simple text files
   // The ALOA Framework was designed to be extended with
   // other file type extractors
   URLMetadatasourceId metadatasourceId =
       new URLMetadatasourceId();
   // An id for the metadata source should be defined,
   // here we use "test" as id
   metadatasourceId.setMetadatasourceIdName("test");
   metadatasourceId.setLoURLLocation(
       "http://www-i5.informatik.rwth-aachen.de");
   
   // creates the proxy
   
   SamgIPortProxy sampleSamgIPortProxyid = new SamgIPortProxy();
   
   sampleSamgIPortProxyid.setEndpoint
   ("http://eiche.informatik.rwth-aachen.de:3333/ALOA/services/SamgIPort");
   
   // sets the target languages
   
   // ALOA supports the following languages:
   // English, German, French, Spanish, Arabic, Korean
   // If no language is defined, the default language
   // of the learning object will be used.
   // A session id for the target languages should be defined
   String[] targets = new String[] {"english", "german"};
   sampleSamgIPortProxyid.setLanguages("1234", targets);
   
   // gets the metadata
   
   // The ALOA result will be a string containing
   // the learning object metadata in XML format
   // If the whole metadata has to be generated
   String[] types = null;
   String res = sampleSamgIPortProxyid.getMetadata(
       "1234", new MetadatasourceId[] {
        metadatasourceId }, types);
   // If only a part of the metadata has to be generated
   // (in this example only Title, Author, and Keywords)
   String[] types = new String[] {"TITLE", "AUTHOR", "KEYWORD"};
   String res = sampleSamgIPortProxyid.getMetadata(
       "1234", new MetadatasourceId[] {
        metadatasourceId }, types);