The repository contains the JSON standard for Animal Data Exchange (ADE) produced by the International Committee for Animal Recording (ICAR).

The content of this repository is licenced using the Apache 2.0 Licence. You are encouraged to use it in your data exchanges and other applications, and also to contribute to the further development of the standard.

If you have implemented previous versions of ADE, you should read the release notes for the latest version.

There are three key areas of this standard:

1. The JSON Schema for Data Types: JSON ICAR Resource Types
2. The URL Schemes and Open API for location centric applications: Application API and specification for these.
3. The Generic Data API for data exchange: Generic Data API

You can also find an explanation of how to choose between location or generic data exchange APIs and the different types of animal groups and sets supported by the standard.

There is no formal compliance defined beyond that implied by the JSON Schema for data types and as stated in the relevant API documentation.

You can find the documentation for this project in the Wiki.

There you will find:

• Information about ICAR and the ADE working group
• The design principles considered by the ADE working group when developing the standard
• How to understand the data model and what resources we support
• How to choose between the location based API and generic data exchange API
• Tips for implementing a client application using the standard
• Tips for implementing a service using the standard

Developers may wish to start by reading OpenAPI specification examples in the \url-schemes folder in their favourite OpenAPI specification editor. You can also view the basic example Url Scheme using the swagger editor.

Developers will likely take one or more of the url-schemes and generate their own code wrappers using openapi-generator or an equivalent generation tool. Version 1.2 of this specification has been tested with OpenAPI Generator version 5.2.0 and conforms to the OpenAPI '3.0' specification as much as possible (and JSON Schema 7). There are some known issues with Nullable reference types, as documented in issue #214. In particular, .NET code generation can sometimes ignore the nullable intention, and Java code generation will generate semantically different outcomes depending on the value of the openApiNullable parameter for code generation. See issue 214 for more details.

Version 1.3 of this standard was based on previous work of:

• The ICAR ADE working group XML standard
• DataLinker
• JoinData
• MIMIRO Open
• And many other contributors

The Animal Data Exchange Working Group welcome contributions

• Read and make suggestions using the Issues List
• The default branch is set to ADE-1 which is the current release. This is to make it easier for organisations to clone and use the specifications. If you expect to contribute you will need to work on the Develop branch instead.
• Propose changes by logging an issue, then creating your own fork of the Develop branch and proposing a Pull Request that will be reviewed by the maintainers.