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Ed-Fi Descriptors

Ed-Fi Descriptors

Jun 20, 2017

Descriptors in the Ed-Fi Data Standard are a set of mechanisms to support flexible enumerations or code tables. Each Descriptor has the following attributes: 

  • [abc]DescriptorId (primary key)[7]

  • namespace

  • codeValue

  • shortDescription

  • description

  • priorDescriptorId

  • effectiveBeginDate

  • effectiveEndDate

  • A map back to an Ed-Fi enumeration value

The GET of a resource must return the namespace and codeValue for Descriptor enumerations. Other components of the Descriptor can be retrieved from the Descriptor resource.

The PUT or POST of a resource must specify the namespace and codeValue for each Descriptor value.

URI Construction and HTTP Verb Usage for Ed-Fi Descriptors

Descriptors are also exposed as Resources of an Ed-Fi REST API and can be accessed and manipulated as follows:

Table 3. Accessing and Manipulating Descriptors

Resource

POST

GET

PUT

DELETE

Resource

POST

GET

PUT

DELETE

/[abc]Descriptors

Adds a new Descriptor

Gets all Descriptors for the subtype

Error

Error

/[abc]Descriptors/{id}

Error

Gets all attributes for an individual Descriptor

Updates an individual Descriptor

Deletes an individual Descriptor

Descriptor References

References to a Descriptor value are a URI constructed with the namespace followed by the URL-encoded codeValue: 

[namespace]/[codeValue]

For example, to refer to the behaviorDescriptor value in the Ed-Fi namespace with a codeValue of “School Violation,” the reference would be the following URI:

https://www.ed-fi.org/Descriptor/BehaviorDescriptor.xml/School%20Violation

 Implementations may provide a default namespace that allows client systems to provide codeValues without the namespace prefix. 

7 Where [abc] is the name of a specific Descriptor.