Format specifications for arbitrary file formats¶
Mandatory Metadata¶
The metadata must follow the Binding Regulations for Storing Data as netCDF Files from Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon. A complete list can be found in the SOP for netcdf.
Metadata file¶
- The mandatory metadata must be provided as a separate JSON file with the ending '.json'.
- One metadata file can describe a dataset on one or any number of data files.
- The data files do not need to have the same file format.
- Data files must be referenced in the metadata file with a variable
data
with their relative file path starting from the metadata. The filepath can be a prefix for multiple files. If this is the case, the prefix must not end special characters (e.g. '*') to indicate a prefix.
It is recommended to store the metadata either in the same directory as the data files (version 1) or have the data in a subdirectory beside the metadata file (version 2).
version 1:
- metadata.json
- data-file-1
- data-file-2
version 2:
- metadata.json
- data-directory
- data-file-1
- data-file-2
This is a minimal example of a valid metadata file:
{
"data": ["data-directory/data-", "data-"],
"title": "title",
"originator": "name",
"creation_date": "date",
"Conventions": "CF-1.8",
"institution": "Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research GmbH, Germany",
"contact": "email@ufz.de",
"source": ["raw_data_name", "variables", "used_methods"],
"crs": "epsg:0",
"additional": ["additional", "data"]
}
The file can contain any amount of additional fields. These will be ignored in the MinIO-GeoNetwork-Workflow.