[THREDDS #DER-521021]: Customizing the look and behavior of the dataset pages

Hi Sargis,

> I am working on integrating THREDDS Data Server into the services offered at 
> the
> Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PODAAC/JPL). I wanted
> to know if there was any way to add extra links or functionality to the 
> Catalog
> pages, and particularly the pages displaying Datasets. Any help on the matter 
> or
> pointers to documentation explaining how to do this would be greatly 
> appreciated.

I'm not sure what kind of functionality you have in mind. But off the top of my 
head the following things come to mind:

    1) You can add various metadata to your config catalogs. Though
    not the most user friendly document, the Catalog XML
    specification [1] describes what can be contained in the
    configuration catalogs. The "THREDDS Metadata" section [2] goes
    into detail about what types of metadata can be included in the
    catalogs. The "metadata" element [3] can contain non-THREDDS XML
    or an XLink to an external XML document. The "documentation"
    element [4] can contain plain text or an HTML fragment.

    Unfortunately, not all these options get mapped very well into
    the HTML catalog/dataset view. A "metadata" element with an XLink
    will show up as a link in the HTML page but any  XML content does
    not show up. Similarly for documentation, plain text is included
    in the HTML view but HTML is not shown.

    2) Another possibility would be to change the CSS files linked to
    in the catalog/dataset HTML pages. The HTML has not been designed
    particularly with this in mind so this may be a bit limited. If
    you place your CSS files in content/thredds/public and call them
    tds.css and tdsCat.css they will be used automatically. Otherwise,
    you can configure the TDS to use other CSS files in the
    threddsConfig.xml file (see [5] for more details on this).

    3) This one is particular to the "Viewer" links at the bottom of
    each dataset page. Besides the default links (IDV and ToolsUI)
    there are two ways to add other viewer links both described in
    [6].

Hope that helpful,

Ethan

[1] 
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/catalog/v1.0.2/InvCatalogSpec.html

[2] 
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/catalog/v1.0.2/InvCatalogSpec.html#threddsMetadataGroup

[3] 
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/catalog/v1.0.2/InvCatalogSpec.html#metadataElement

[4] 
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/catalog/v1.0.2/InvCatalogSpec.html#documentationType

[5] 
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/tds4.2/reference/ThreddsConfigXMLFile.html#Generated_HTML_Pages

[6] 
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/projects/THREDDS/tech/tds4.2/reference/Viewers.html

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: DER-521021
Department: Support THREDDS
Priority: High
Status: Closed