Versioning¶
As a user of an Islandora repository, you may be wondering - Is this content being versioned? Could I restore from a previous version if I needed to? Can I see a list of versions for an object? The answer to these questions is two-fold, and largely yes. The architecture of Islandora provides users with a Drupal implementation and a Fedora implementation which are connected in Islandora.
Islandora Software Versioning
Looking for information about versions of Islandora itself? The latest Islandora follows semantic versioning. Previously, Islandora's versions were tied to the version of Drupal and numbered in order of release, such as Islandora 6.x-13.1 or Islandora 7.x-1.13. More information.
Drupal Revisioning¶
Drupal provides a concept of revisions which allows you to track the differences between multiple versions of your content and revert to older ones. The list of revisions for a node, media, or taxonomy term are available at the entity's page, with /revisions appended to the URL. There are Drupal docs on revisioning.
Fedora and Memento¶
Fedora implements the Memento specification for versioning resources, which is a time-based HTTP framework. Fedora provides documentation as well as an API implementation.
Basic Data Flow¶
- A node or media object is created or updated in Drupal.
- When an entity is revisionable, and it isn't the initial creation, it adds a flag to the event object that gets passed to Alpaca.
- The islandora-indexing-fcrepo module of Alpaca looks for that flag and fires a call to the versioning endpoint of Milliner.
- Milliner uses the Chullo library to create a version in Fedora.