NYPL Digital Collections API client and JavaScript module

A command line interface and Node.js module for The New York Public Library Digital Collections API, which allows you to conveniently download all captures for a Digital Collections item or collection UUID.

A valid API access token is needed to use this utility. Visit http://api.repo.nypl.org/ to sign up.

This module is a work in progress, and currenly only supports one of the Digital Collections API's methods.

Supported methods:

• Return all captures for a given Collection, Sub-container or Item UUID.
• Return MODS records for Item UUID.

Note: The API only returns captures with image links if the captures are in the public domain.

Warning: some Digital Collections items or collections contain a lot of captures. This tool will automatically use the API's pagination to download them all (100 per page, by default). Be careful, or you'll quickly hit your rate limit!

Standalone usage

Installation:

npm install -g digital-collections

Usage:

digital-collections -t API_TOKEN -s 439afdd0-c62b-012f-66d1-58d385a7bc34

The result is a JSON stream containing all captures for a given UUID.

Instead of using the -t option, you can also set the DIGITAL_COLLECTIONS_TOKEN environment variable:

export DIGITAL_COLLECTIONS_TOKEN=123456abcdef

Node.js module

Installation:

npm install digital-collections

Usage:

var digitalCollections = require('digital-collections')

// Instead of using the token option, you can also set the
// `DIGITAL_COLLECTIONS_TOKEN` environment variable
var options = {
  uuid: '439afdd0-c62b-012f-66d1-58d385a7bc34',
  token: '123456abcdef'
}

digitalCollections.captures(options)
  .on('data', function(data) {
    // the captures function returns a stream with all the UUID's
    // captures as JavaScript objects
    console.log(data)
  })

API

captures

Returns a stream of capture objects

Parameters

• options Object
  • options.uuid String UUID of a Collection, Sub-container or Item
  • options.token [String] Digital Collections API access token
  • options.perPage [number] items per page, higher means less requests. Max. 500 (optional, default 50)

mods

Returns MODS records for capture

Parameters

• options Object
  • options.uuid String UUID of an Item
  • options.token [String] Digital Collections API access token
• callback