RelatonUn is a Ruby gem that implements the IsoBibliographicItem model.

You can use it to retrieve metadata of UN documents from https://documents.un.org, and access such metadata through the Relaton::Un::Item object.

Installation

Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:

gem 'relaton-un'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install relaton-un

Usage

Search for a standard using keywords

require 'relaton/un'
=> true

hits = Relaton::Un::Bibliography.search("TRADE/CEFACT/2004/32")
=> <Relaton::Un::HitCollection:0x00000000001660 @ref=TRADE/CEFACT/2004/32 @fetched=false>

item = hits[0].item
=> #<Relaton::Un::Item:0x000000012385aa60
...

XML serialization

item.to_xml
=> "<bibitem id="TRADECEFACT200432" type="standard" schema-version="v1.4.1">
      <fetched>2026-03-03</fetched>
      <title language="en" script="Latn" type="title-main"/>
      <title language="en" script="Latn" type="main"/>
      <uri type="pdf">https://documents.un.org/api/symbol/access?j=G0430683&amp;t=pdf</uri>
      <docidentifier type="UN" primary="true">TRADE/CEFACT/2004/32</docidentifier>
      <docnumber>TRADE/CEFACT/2004/32</docnumber>
      <date type="published">
        <on>2004-03-18</on>
      </date>
      <language>en</language>
      <script>Latn</script>
    </bibitem>"

With argument bibdata: true it outputs XML wrapped by bibdata element and adds flavor ext element.

item.to_xml bibdata: true
=> "<bibdata type="standard" schema-version="v1.4.1">
      <fetched>2026-03-03</fetched>
      <title language="en" script="Latn" type="title-main"/>
      <title language="en" script="Latn" type="main"/>
      <uri type="pdf">https://documents.un.org/api/symbol/access?j=G0430683&amp;t=pdf</uri>
      <docidentifier type="UN" primary="true">TRADE/CEFACT/2004/32</docidentifier>
      <docnumber>TRADE/CEFACT/2004/32</docnumber>
      <date type="published">
        <on>2004-03-18</on>
      </date>
      <language>en</language>
      <script>Latn</script>
      <ext schema-version="v1.0.0">
        <distribution>general</distribution>
        <session>
          <number>10</number>
          <agenda-id>12</agenda-id>
        </session>
        <job_number>G0430683</job_number>
      </ext>
    </bibdata>"

Get code, and year

Relaton::Un::Bibliography.get "UN TRADE/CEFACT/2004/32"
[relaton-un] INFO: (UN TRADE/CEFACT/2004/32) Fetching from documents.un.org ...
[relaton-un] INFO: (UN TRADE/CEFACT/2004/32) Found: `TRADE/CEFACT/2004/32`
=> #<Relaton::Un::ItemData:0x0000000127d9c448
...

Typed links

UN documens may have pdf and word source link types.

item.source[0].type
=> "pdf"

item.source[0].content
=> "https://documents.un.org/api/symbol/access?j=G0430683&t=pdf"

Create bibliographic item from XML

Relaton::Un::Bibdata.from_xml File.read('spec/fixtures/bibdata.xml')
=> #<Relaton::Bib::ItemData:0x000000012772a448
...

Create bibliographic item from YAML

Relaton::Un::Item.from_yaml File.read('spec/fixtures/item.yaml')
=> #<Relaton::Un::ItemData:0x0000000127d7a140
...

Logging

RelatonUn uses the relaton-logger gem for logging. By default, it logs to STDOUT. To change the log levels and add other loggers, read the relaton-logger documentation.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to [rubygems.org](https://rubygems.org).

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/calconnect/relaton_un.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the [MIT License](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT).