ro-crate-rust

A Rust implementation of the RO-Crate metadata specification for Research Objects. This project provides both a library interface for managing RO-Crate metadata within Rust applications and a CLI tool for command-line interaction with RO-Crate files.

Features

• Create, validate, and manipulate RO-Crate metadata files and directories
• Parse and generate RO-Crate metadata in JSON-LD format
• Easy integration as a Rust library or use as a CLI tool
• Strongly typed models for RO-Crate entities

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Library Usage

To use ro-crate-rust as a library, add it as a dependency in your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
ro-crate-rust = "0.1.0"
# Replace with the latest version

Main Types

• RoCrate: The primary type representing a RO-Crate package.
• Entity: Represents an object in the RO-Crate metadata graph (such as files, people, organizations).
• Result: Alias for the crate's common result type.

Load an Existing RO-Crate

use ro_crate_rust::{RoCrate, Result};

fn main() -> Result<()> {
    // Load an existing RO-Crate from a directory
    let crate_path = "path/to/ro-crate";
    let ro_crate = RoCrate::load(crate_path)?;

    // Access metadata (for example)
    println!("Name: {}", ro_crate.metadata().name);

    // Iterate files
    for file in ro_crate.files() {
        println!("File: {:?}", file.path);
    }

    Ok(())
}

Create a New RO-Crate

use ro_crate_rust::{RoCrate, Entity, Result};

fn main() -> Result<()> {
    // Start a new RO-Crate with a name
    let mut crate = RoCrate::new("Example Crate");

    // Add a file
    crate.add_file("README.md", "Project description");

    // Add an author entity
    let author = Entity::Person {
        id: "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097".to_string(),
        name: "Jane Doe".to_string(),
        // fill other fields as needed
    };
    crate.add_entity(author);

    // Save crate to a directory
    crate.save("./output_crate")?;
    Ok(())
}

Add a Custom Metadata Entity

You can add custom entities to the metadata graph:

use ro_crate_rust::{RoCrate, Entity};

let mut crate = RoCrate::new("Custom Crate");
let dataset = Entity::Dataset {
    id: "data.csv".to_string(),
    name: "Experiment Data".to_string(),
    // any other relevant fields
};
crate.add_entity(dataset);

Validate an RO-Crate

Check if the crate is structurally valid:

let is_valid = ro_crate.is_valid();
if is_valid {
    println!("RO-Crate is valid!");
} else {
    println!("RO-Crate is invalid!");
}

Common Methods

Method	Description
RoCrate::load(path)	Load crate from directory or zip file
RoCrate::new(name)	Create a new empty crate
crate.add_file(path, descr)	Add a file with path and description
crate.add_entity(entity)	Add a metadata entity (Person, Dataset, etc)
crate.files()	List files in the crate
crate.metadata()	Access root crate metadata
crate.save(path)	Save crate to the specified directory
crate.is_valid()	Validate the crate structure

Example Entities

Some typical entities:

Entity::Person {
    id: String,         // e.g. ORCID or URL
    name: String,       // person's name
    // additional fields...
}

Entity::Dataset {
    id: String,         // file path or URI
    name: String,       // dataset name
}

For more details, review the source code for available entity types and options.

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CLI Usage

After installing (see Installation below), you can use the CLI:

Initialize a RO-Crate

ro-crate-rust --crate-dir path/to/output init

Add a File to a Crate

ro-crate-rust --crate-dir path/to/crate add -P "description=Lorem Ipsum" -p path/to/file

Export ro-crate as zip

ro-crate-rust --crate-dir path/to/crate write-zip -p path/to/destination

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Installation

Library

Add to Cargo.toml as shown above.

CLI

Install via Cargo:

cargo install --git https://github.com/arunaengine/ro-crate-rust

Or build manually:

git clone https://github.com/arunaengine/ro-crate-rust.git
cd ro-crate-rust
cargo build --release

The binary will be at target/release/ro-crate-rust.

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Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md before opening issues or PRs.

License

See LICENSE for license details.

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Reference

• RO-Crate spec
• ro-crate-rust GitHub