Hi

This is my first message to this list, which I've only just joined at the recommendation of a colleague. I'm looking to develop a website for Open Educational Resources (OER), which will query SRU services in open repositories. I've been trying to write PHP scripts to query SRU services, but running into the sand parsing the returned XML. My preliminary question is: is this listserv an appropriate place to post technical queries about SRU, or is more 'meta'?

The query I want to post is related to, and descended from, a query I posted to StackOverflow a while back (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24248429/simplest-way-to-parse-sru-xml). The repository I'm wanting to query, in the first instance, is the Intralibrary installation at my current institution (SRU service URL: http://explor.bcu.ac.uk/IntraLibrary-SRU). An example query I need to parse the results of is:

http://explor.bcu.ac.uk/IntraLibrary-SRU?operation=searchRetrieve&query=gaelic&version=1.1

If I can get SRU querying of this repository working then it'll be applicable to other repositories.

As background, I have experience of learning object repository (Intralibrary) administration, and of learning object metadata schemas (especially UK LOM Core) and applications. I'm also an experienced PHP coder. I've done an awful lot of reading of fine manuals, fora and websites. I have a half-decent understanding of XML but am no expert, and know nothing at all about XPath and XSLT.

Thanks in anticipation for your tolerance and help :)

Fred
www.fredriley.org.uk