What is the handle syntax?

[ardc-shorn]

Question received:

Can you point me to technical documentation describing the syntax of a RAiD? We are developing a program where users enter in their RAiD, and we want to be able to validate what they have typed in is a RAiD (just the syntax at this stage, not if it is an issued value or not). For example, if they typed in "123", "123.456.789/1234", "123.456", "123.456/789" or "abc", we want to reject the ones that are clearly not RAiDs.

[ardc-shorn]

RAiD uses the CNRI handle.net registry.

Details on the handle format can be found in section 1.1 of the technical manual.

Note that, currently, the Oceania region implementation of RAiD (known as "Raido", i.e. this repository) actually uses the ARDC PIDS service to mint raid handles:

• https://archive-intranet.ardc.edu.au/display/DOC/Handle+Service+Home
• https://github.com/au-research/ANDS-PIDS-Service

EDIT:
This means you can verify the handle format - but there is currently no way to guarantee that a specific handle is actually a raid (given that the handle prefix is shared by all customers of the ARDC handle service and there are many non-raid related users of that service).

There are plans to purchase either a single global prefix for all raids, or possibly a handle prefix per registration agency, sharing a single raid-specific prefix. This decision hasn't yet been made though.