A quick and dirty example using the DSpace 4+ REST API to find all collections under a given community.

rest-find-collections.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
#
# rest-find-collections.py 1.1.1
#
# Copyright 2018 Alan Orth.
#
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
#
# ---
#
# A quick and dirty example for parsing the DSpace REST API to find and print
# the names of all collections contained in a community hierarchy. It expects
# exactly one command line argument: the handle of a community. For example:
#
#   $ ./rest-find-collections.py 10568/1
#
# You can optionally specify the URL of a DSpace REST application (default is to
# use http://localhost:8080/rest).
#
# This script is written for Python 3 and requires several modules that you can
# install with pip (I recommend setting up a Python virtual environment first):
#
#   $ pip install requests colorama
#
# See: https://requests.readthedocs.org/en/master

import argparse
from colorama import Fore
import requests
import signal
import sys


def signal_handler(signal, frame):
    sys.exit(1)



def parse_community(community_id):
    request_url = rest_base_url + rest_communities_endpoint + str(community_id) + '?expand=collections,subCommunities'
    try:
        request = requests.get(request_url, headers={'user-agent': rest_user_agent})
    except requests.ConnectionError:
        sys.stderr.write(Fore.RED + 'Could not connect to {0}.\n'.format(args.rest_url) + Fore.RESET)
        exit(1)

    if request.status_code == requests.codes.ok:
        subcommunities = request.json()['subcommunities']
        collections = request.json()['collections']

        for subcommunity in subcommunities:
            subcommunity_id = subcommunity['id']

            if args.debug:
                sys.stderr.write(Fore.YELLOW + 'Found subcommunity (id: {subcommunity_id}, handle: {subcommunity_handle}): {subcommunity_name} ==> I must go deeper!\n'.format(subcommunity_id=str(subcommunity_id), subcommunity_handle=subcommunity['handle'], subcommunity_name=subcommunity['name']) + Fore.RESET)

            parse_community(subcommunity_id)

        for collection in collections:
            if args.debug:
                sys.stderr.write(Fore.YELLOW + 'Found collection (id: {collection_id}, handle: {collection_handle}): {collection_name}\n'.format(collection_id=str(collection['id']), collection_handle=collection['handle'], collection_name=collection['name']) + Fore.RESET)

            all_collections.append(collection['name'])
    else:
        sys.stderr.write(Fore.RED + 'Status not ok! Request URL was: {request_url}\n'.format(request_url=request.url) + Fore.RESET)
        exit(1)


parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Find all collections under a given DSpace community.')
parser.add_argument('community', help='Community to process, for example: 10568/1')
parser.add_argument('--debug', '-d', help='Print debug messages.', action='store_true')
parser.add_argument('--rest-url', '-u', help='URL of DSpace REST application.', default='http://localhost:8080/rest')
args = parser.parse_args()

handle = args.community

# REST base URL and endpoints (with leading and trailing slashes)
rest_base_url = args.rest_url
rest_handle_endpoint = '/handle/'
rest_communities_endpoint = '/communities/'
rest_collections_endpoint = '/collections/'
rest_user_agent = 'Alan Test Python Requests Bot'

# initialize empty list of all collections
all_collections = []

# set the signal handler for SIGINT (^C)
signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, signal_handler)

# fetch the metadata for the given handle
request_url = rest_base_url + rest_handle_endpoint + str(handle)

try:
    request = requests.get(request_url, headers={'user-agent': rest_user_agent})
except requests.ConnectionError:
    sys.stderr.write(Fore.RED + 'Could not connect to REST API: {0}.\n'.format(args.rest_url) + Fore.RESET)
    exit(1)

# Check the request status
if request.status_code == requests.codes.ok:
    handle_type = request.json()['type']

    # Make sure the given handle is a community
    if handle_type == 'community':
        community_id = request.json()['id']
        parse_community(community_id)

        for collection in all_collections:
            print(Fore.GREEN + 'Name of collection: {collection}'.format(collection=collection) + Fore.RESET)
    else:
        sys.stderr.write(Fore.RED + '{handle} is type "{handle_type}", not community.\n'.format(handle=handle, handle_type=handle_type) + Fore.RESET)
        exit(1)
else:
    sys.stderr.write(Fore.RED + 'Request failed. Are you sure {handle} is a valid handle?\n'.format(handle=handle) + Fore.RESET)
    exit(1)