Ed-Fi Descriptors

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:

namespace
codeValue
shortDescription
description
effectiveBeginDate
effectiveEndDate

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 in a descriptor reference (described below).

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
/[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 must be constructed in the following format:

uri://[namespace]/[name of descriptor]#[descriptor value]

For example, to refer to the academicSubject value in the Ed-Fi namespace ("ed-fi.org") with a codeValue of “Chemistry,” the reference would be the following URI:

uri://ed-fi.org/AcademicSubjectDescriptor#Chemistry

Values must be sent as-is and not be URI or otherwise encoded. For example, a descriptor whose codeValue has spaces must be sent thus:

uri://ed-fi.org/AcademicSubjectDescriptor#English Language Arts

and not as

uri://ed-fi.org/AcademicSubjectDescriptor#English%20Language%20Arts