Metadata

Key point: Generally regarded as properties on a document, this term has some additional contexts.

“Metadata” is an appropriate term for several concepts in PageSeeder. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to align these concepts behind a single definition. Here are the different ways PageSeeder uses this term.

Document metadata

Any information associated with a document that is not part of the content is considered document metadata. Document metadata include the core properties and metadata properties, which you can view in the document info and metadata panel.

Core properties are available on any document, folder, or URL and include the title, filename, labels, description, last modified date. You can edit some properties like title, description, and labels. Others such as URI ID and media type are readonly because PageSeeder generates them automatically.

Metadata properties are custom properties defined by administrators in the following templates:

document template – for a specific document type.
media template – for a specific media type.
URL template – for a specific URL type.

These properties extend core properties without being part of the content. Document metadata properties appear in the index for searches, and PageSeeder records their changes in the edit history.

Source metadata

Source metadata refers to externally defined properties attached to media objects and URLs.

Many media objects contain built-in metadata. For example, JPEG images can include EXIF data with technical or location information. PageSeeder can extract source metadata from video files, audio files, images, Office documents, and PDF documents.

For developers: For further information, see media types, extraction on the PageSeeder developer’s website.

Websites often provide additional properties for their pages like keywords, language, license, and feature images. PageSeeder can fetch these properties to prefill information, which you can see in the URL card.

For developers: In developer view, you can see the source metadata for a media object or a URL, in the metadata tab of the document developer panel.

PageSeeder doesn't store or index source metadata except for image dimensions, so they aren’t available for searches.

However, PageSeeder can use source metadata by adding it to the document as metadata properties. The media template or URL template defines how source metadata maps to document metadata.

For managers: If the document template changes, media objects and URLs must be reprocessed. This can be done from the template configuration page.

<metadata> element

In PSML, the <metadata> element is used to contain the metadata properties.

For developers: For further information, see element <metadata> in the PSML element reference on the PageSeeder developer’s website.

Metadata level

When the content of a document is a media object or URL instead of PSML, the metadata is represented in PSML with level defined as “metadata”, instead of “portable”.

For developers: For further information, see Universal Format in the PSML element reference on the PageSeeder developer’s website.