WAF Best Practices

Best practices for creating Web Accessible Folders (WAFs)

What is a WAF?

A WAF stands for a web-accessible folder. It is any folder with file contents exposed via a webserver to the outside world.

WAFs for the registry should have a folder named after the parent organization in lowercase. WAFs should currently only be one level deep in hierarchy. Files contained within the WAF should be XML files conforming to the ISO 19115-2 metadata standard. Ideally, files should be validated to ensure compliance with the standard, (See, for example, http://mrdata.usgs.gov/validation/) although datasets which do not perfectly validate will still be harvested.

THREDDS ISO support

Although the WAF parser can in theory follow external links, it is preferred to have WAF directories instead point to files hosted on the same server. For THREDDS to generate ISO XML files, ncISO must be enabled.

See http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/thredds/current/tds/reference/ncISO.html for details on how to enable ncISO.

Once enabled, export the file to the folder with the WAF, either through manually using a web browser to save ISOs of interest or using a tool such as wget:

wget "http://dm1.caricoos.org/thredds/iso/buoys/RealTime/PR1/DSG_PR1.accelerometer2.realtime.nc?catalog=http%3A%2F%2Fdm1.caricoos.org%2Fthredds%2Fcatalog%2Fbuoys%2FRealTime%2FPR1%2Fcatalog.html&dataset=buoys%2FRealTime%2FPR1%2FDSG_PR1.accelerometer2.realtime.nc" -O "dest_dir/RealTime_FPR1_DSG_PR1.accelerometer2.realtime.xml"

Hosting a WAF on a webserver.

These directions assume you have a folder on a filesystem with ISOs stored within.

Apache .conf files

In the .conf files, use the +Indexes directive

<Directory /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/listme>
  Options +Indexes
</Directory>

See: https://wiki.apache.org/httpd/DirectoryListings

Nginx

Inside of the server block, put the autoindex on inside the appropriate location block where the WAF directory is contained:

location /somedir {
       autoindex on;
}

See http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_autoindex_module.html

IIS

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725840%28v=ws.10%29.aspx