Embedding file content

The file content element <FContent> is used to identify a content file contained internally within a METS document. The content file must be either Base64 encoded and contained within the subsidiary <binData> wrapper element, or consist of XML information and be contained within the subsidiary <xmlData> wrapper element. An xml data element <xmlData> is used to contain an XML encoded file. The content of an <xmlData> element can be in any namespace or in no namespace. As permitted by the XML Schema Standard, the processContents attribute value for the metadata in an <xmlData> element is set to “lax”. Therefore, if the source schema and its location are identified by means of an xsi:schemaLocation attribute, then an XML processor will validate the elements for which it can find declarations. If a source schema is not identified, or cannot be found at the specified schemaLocation, then an XML validator will check for well-formedness, but otherwise skip over the elements appearing in the <xmlData> element. METS default encoding scheme is UTF-8 Unicode.

See also:

• Embedding XML content in METS
• Embedding binary data in METS

File content – example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mets:mets xmlns:mets="http://www/loc/gov/METS/v2"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://www/loc/gov/METS/v2
   http://www/loc/gov/standards/mets/mets.xsd"
 OBJID="ark:/13030/kt9s2009hz" LABEL="Martial Epigrams">
  ...
  <mets:fileSec>
    <mets:fileGrp ID="TIFF_GRP01" USE="MASTER IMAGE">
      <mets:file ID="epi01m" SIZE="65768" CREATED="2006-04-11T07:35:22"
          MIMETYPE="image/tiff" ADMID="MIX_v1.0_TIFF_epio1m">
        <mets:FContent ID="eip01m.tiff" USE="Preservation Master">
          <mets:binData>[base 64 encoded data goes here]</mets:binData>
        </mets:FContent>
      </mets:file>
    </mets:fileGrp>
  <mets:fileSec>
  ...