Glossary · Packages and variants

iiRDS container

Also known as: container, package directory structure

In iiRDS (intelligent information Request and Delivery Standard), an iiRDS container is the directory structure that holds all files of an iiRDS package: a single root directory, a META-INF directory with the metadata file metadata.rdf, and the content files in subdirectories.

iiRDS term
Ontology
Information architecture

In one sentence

An iiRDS container is the folder structure of a package: META-INF with metadata.rdf, and all content files in subdirectories below the root.

Example

A root folder with META-INF/metadata.rdf, META-INF/metadata.jsonld and the content folders content/html and content/pdf.

In-depth wiki articleiiRDS container and ZIP archive: how an iiRDS package is structured and exchanged

How it applies

Metadata location: META-INF is used only for metadata. It must contain metadata.rdf in RDF 1.1 XML syntax and may contain metadata.jsonld in JSON-LD 1.1 — mandatory for iiRDS/H. If both exist, they must say the same thing.
Content location: All content — PDF, HTML, media, scripts, style sheets, nested packages — goes into subdirectories below the root, never into the root itself or into META-INF. The paths in iirds:source of each rendition are relative to the root.
File names: File names are case-sensitive and limited to 255 characters; full paths to 260. A few characters are excluded so that containers work on all common file systems.
AI and ingestion: The fixed layout makes ingestion trivial: read META-INF/metadata.rdf, then follow each rendition's source path. No crawler, no guessing.

Container vs. ZIP archive

The container is the logical structure; the ZIP archive is its standard implementation for exchange. An iiRDS package must be delivered as a ZIP archive.