Prettier links to Freebase than GUIDs

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    1. metaeducation
      Aug 22, 2008
      metaeducation says:

      Hi there...

      I'm trying to use a "prettier" URL in my application than to the Freebase GUID-based one.  Got my hopes up from what I read at http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/freebase_overview.php

      "Each permanent object in the system has a GUID - a unique identifier, something like this: #9202a8c040000064..... The identifier can be used to refer to the object via URL and via queries. In addition to the GUID, there are other ways to refer to the object, for example, http://www.freebase.com/view/en/leonardo_da_vinci. Beyond that, there are even other aliases, for example, you can refer to a public company by its stock ticker symbol. But regardless of the reference, the key point is that you end up with the same, unique node in the system."

      That sounded good, but... how can you do this, besides typing in the stock symbol as an "alias"?

      I'd imagine it's very common for a domain to have a property which is generally unique within that space.  All things being equal, people would like to see a link with that instead of the GUID.  But to have to type it in twice (once as a property and once as an "alias") seems like the wrong answer..

      There are a lot of cool things in api/* but I haven't found one that would finesse something like this, any pointers?  I'm just trying to get a link that will jump to the Freebase page for the topic...based on, say, the ISBN# of a book.

      2. brendan Metaweb Staff
        Aug 22, 2008
        brendan says:

        I think freebase has mimicked wikipedia in populating the "/view/en" (i.e. english language) namespace.  Clearly, there can be only one leonardo_da_vinci, and that's not a problem in many cases. There are probably many topics in freebase that could be reliably identified by their common name in that space but the freebase staff (who control it) haven't caught up.  Perhaps some collaborative feature in this are would be helpful e.g. "suggest a unique name for this topic", "flag this topic as more deserving of 'john_smith' " :)

        your idea of creating other url paths that represent namespaces is fantastic e.g. NYSE stock symbols could be /view/nyse/ge. This could go a long way for providing user readable urls to topics.

        I think freebase.com should consider this a pretty hot feature request; it's not possible now. At least, the company could start creating url/namespaces, but allowing users to create (or at least nominate them) should be considered as well.

      3. metaeducation
        Aug 22, 2008
        metaeducation says:

        Hmmm...

        Well, if I could spec this, I'd like to be able to form an inbound link to Freebase by providing a property name and a value, and simply get a page to view the article from that.  e.g. ("book/book_edition/isbn", "817525766")  If this does not specify a unique article, then come up with a list of all matches.

        It would be trivial for Metaweb to add an API that did this, it's just that once you start putting question marks and such in things it starts to confuse users, e.g.

        http://freebase.com/api/view?property="book/book_edition/isbn"?value="817525766"

        So maybe overloading view (or something otherwise prettier) could be good:

        http://freebase.com/view/book/book_edition/isbn=817525766

        A key goal would be that when you loaded an article this way, you would not be redirected, but rather see that "pretty" URL in the address bar.

        This way pretty links would come from properties of the data, without anyone having to do extra work in disambiguation that hadn't already been done.

      4. crism Metaweb Staff
        Aug 22, 2008
        crism says:
        We’ve done this for some properties already, like NAICS industry classification, IMDb IDs for actors and films. You can do it yourself in your own namespace; it might be a bit unwieldy (/user/metaeducation/isbn/0817525766) but it would work. If you come up with a good one we could link it into a shorter place (like /authority/isbn).
      5. metaeducation
        Aug 22, 2008
        metaeducation says:

        Really?  This sounds good.  How would I go about doing this?

        As you probably guessed from our discussion in Music, I'm actually trying to link to albums by catalog #.  (Imagine a manufacturer who has several releases of the same album, under different numbers, and would like the links to go to the appropriate Freebase article.  So that's what we're looking for.  A pretty URL with the catalog number in it, instead of GUID, which takes one to the appropriate page to upload cover art or edit the track info.)

        It appears, however, that the albums are not correctly organized right now, since multiple releases of the same album are in Freebase as separate "albums".  I'm worried about how doing the work of properly sorting releases might interfere with synchronizing the data with MusicBrainz... is it better just to let well enough alone?

      6. crism Metaweb Staff
        Aug 22, 2008
        crism says:

        You can make namespaces, such as /user/metaeducation/labels and /user/metaeducation/labels/capitol, with the query editor. Create an instance of /type/namespace and add a key into the parent namespace.

        {

          "type":"/type/namespace",

          "name":"My Namespace",

          "key":{

            "value":"sample",

            "namespace":"/user/metaeducation"

          },

          "create":"unless_exists"

        }

        will create an instance of Namespace addressable as /user/metaeducation/sample. You can add things to that namespace:

        {

          "id":"/guid/deadbeefcafebabedeadbabecafebeef",

          "key":{

            "value":"why_dead_beef",

            "namespace":"/user/metaeducation/sample",

            "connect":"insert"

          }

        }

        As for uniqueness of albums: the problem is that MusicBrainz only models releases, not actual albums. We attempt to identify releases of the same albums, but we inevitably miss some as it is an automated process. Duplicate albums should be marked for merge. 

      7. jeff Metaweb Staff
        Aug 22, 2008
        jeff says:

        Bear in mind also that ids must be unique within a namespace. If catalog numbers are all unique, this isn't a problem. But if they're only unique per label, this might be enormously cumbersome. If I'm reading you right, Chris, I'm seeing a one-namespace-per-label model, which, while theoretically do-able, seems like a vast undertaking.


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