IVOA registry validator: OAI-PMH harvest checks, IVOA four-GET profile, VOResource XSD/XSLT validation.

Web UI colors and typography follow ivoa.net; design tokens live in assets/static/css/ivoa-theme.css.

python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[dev]"
source .venv/bin/activate

Production (no reload):

benson
# Proxy headers are on by default (--proxy-headers). Disable with: benson --no-proxy-headers
# or: uvicorn benson.app:create_app --factory --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000 --proxy-headers

Development (auto-reload on changes under src/ and assets/):

benson --reload
# or: BENSON_DEV=1 benson
# or: uvicorn benson.app:create_app --factory --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000 --reload --reload-dir src --reload-dir assets

Deployers who operate a live Registry of Registries instance should run the publisher liveness check periodically:

benson check-publishers

The command reads PUBLISHERS_REGISTRY_FILE, sends one lightweight OAI-PMH Identify request to each registered publisher endpoint, and writes status metadata back into the publishers JSON file. It does not harvest records; its intent is to catch entries whose services have gone stale, become unreachable, changed identity, or stopped operating.

Typical usage is from cron or another deployment scheduler, using the same environment and volume mount as the running Benson service:

PUBLISHERS_REGISTRY_FILE=/data/publishers/publishers.json benson check-publishers

Useful options:

• --dry-run reports results without updating publishers.json.
• --json prints machine-readable results for logs or monitoring.
• --timeout SEC overrides PUBLISHERS_CHECK_TIMEOUT_SEC.

Any non-ok publisher causes a non-zero exit code unless --dry-run is used, which makes the command suitable for alerting. The main page displays the last check status and timestamp once the command has populated last_checked_at and check_status.

When the validator form enables Use built-in XSD schemas, phase 2 (IVOA four GETs) and phase 3 (harvested records) use the bundled namespace map in src/benson/xml/catalog.py under SCHEMA_ROOT (default assets/schemas/).

OAI responses are validated in two steps: embedded description / metadata / about payloads are checked against the appropriate IVOA XSDs (Registry Interface records use benson-ivoa-bundle.xsd so xsi:type extensions such as vg:Registry resolve), then the OAI-PMH envelope is checked via benson-oai-bundle.xsd. Imports are resolved locally (no network). This matches the regvalidate functional contract intent; validating against OAI-v2.xsd alone is not sufficient for registry Identify responses that embed ri:Resource metadata.

Developer guide: docs/schemas-and-validation-assets.md — directory layout, bundle composition, namespace table, XSLT assets (assets/validate/), standards catalog (assets/standards/), and how each validation phase uses them.

After installing with .[dev] (see Run above):

pytest

On Debian/Ubuntu, install system libraries for lxml if needed: apt-get install libxml2 libxslt1.1.

Build and run locally:

docker build -t benson:local .
docker run --rm -p 8000:8000 benson:local

Pull from GitHub Container Registry (after CI has pushed an image):

docker login ghcr.io
docker pull ghcr.io/my-org/benson:latest

docker-compose.yml runs Benson with host directories for registry catalogue data:

Example layout:

data/
  searchables/
    registries.csv          # RegTAP sync export
  publishers/
    publishers.json         # canonical registry list (OAI XML generated at /list-publishers)

docker compose up --build

Then open http://localhost:8000/ (landing page) or http://localhost:8000/validator.

When the cache directory is empty, searchables are fetched live from SEARCHABLES_REGTAP_SYNC_URL if configured. An empty publishers.json is created automatically; register registries via the validator after a successful dry-run validation.