DROID (Digital Record Object Identification)
Description[edit]
DROID (Digital Record Object Identification) is a software tool developed to perform automated batch identification of file formats. DROID is designed to meet the fundamental requirement of any digital repository to be able to identify the precise format of all stored digital objects, and to link that identification to a central registry of technical information about that format and its dependencies.
DROID uses the PRONOM signature files to perform format identification. Like PRONOM, it was developed by the National Archives of the UK. Written in Java, XML.
PRONOM[edit]
The format information held in PRONOM is what powers DROID (Digital Record Object Identification). Both are maintained by the UK's National Archives.
DROID downloads the latest signature files from PRONOM, and those are used to drive the identification process. See the PRONOM release notes.
A number of other tools and registries have been based around the PRONOM data. These include:
Although the information and website are made freely available under the Open Government License, the underlying software engine that powers PRONOM is proprietary.
The PRONOM Web API[edit]
The website is oriented towards manual browsing, but note that each PRONOM registry entry as a permalink, like this:
http://apps.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pronom/fmt/579
and furthermore, by appending '.xml' to the URL for any entry, the data can be recovered as XML:
http://apps.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pronom/fmt/579.xml
User Experiences[edit]
- Tool demo with videos in the DPC Handbook
- Digital Asset Assessment Tool - Assessment of file format testing tools.
- Comparing how Apache Tika and DROID perform HTML identification: How much of the UK's HTML is valid?
- An Analysis Engine for the DROID CSV Export
- KOST-CECO: Used in KOST-Val for the file format identification. For performance and granularity reasons an own SignatureFile is used instead of the official PRONOM registry.
- FITS (File Information Tool Set): Used in FITS
Development Activity[edit]
All development activity is visible on GitHub: http://github.com/digital-preservation/droid/commits
Release Feed[edit]
Below the last 3 release feeds:
- 2022-01-07 15:49:54
- [tag:github.com,2008:Repository/4737996/droid-6.5.2 droid-6.5.2]
- by sparkhi
- 2020-05-01 11:04:35
- [tag:github.com,2008:Repository/4737996/droid-6.5 6.5 Release]
- by jcharlet
- 2020-03-27 17:04:19
- [tag:github.com,2008:Repository/4737996/droid-6.5-RC3 6.5 Release Candidate 3]
- by jcharlet
Activity Feed[edit]
Below the last 5 commits:
- 2022-09-23 13:26:46
- [tag:github.com,2008:Grit::Commit/96c5cf4403d8b930904afac11ef3010ec042f238 updated bundled JRE version to the newest of Java11 (#817)]
- by sparkhi https://github.com/sparkhi
- 2022-09-23 11:57:21
- [tag:github.com,2008:Grit::Commit/93a1a13455a5424821e940937faaec387bf79df6 Fix serialization - inverted bytes and byte ranges (#816)]
- by nishihatapalmer https://github.com/nishihatapalmer
- 2022-09-07 11:22:01
- [tag:github.com,2008:Grit::Commit/defddd67650b26117cee785a8f7ed1ec2ce10b5e updated tna logo on splash screen (#815)]
- by sparkhi https://github.com/sparkhi
- 2022-09-06 11:44:35
- [tag:github.com,2008:Grit::Commit/817ac4f26ea034e28062dafaec28369f73ff248f Add droid api module (#807)]
- by MancunianSam https://github.com/MancunianSam
- 2022-07-01 15:26:45
- [tag:github.com,2008:Grit::Commit/272e38d6de7eed339a7296368867995cda512631 build(deps): bump dependency-check-maven from 7.1.0 to 7.1.1 (#793)]
- by dependabot https://github.com/dependabot
About Formats[edit]
DROID do only read the format itself, not the spesification as such