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Map ORCIDs to Local User Accounts

The Data Transfer System (DTS) uses ORCIDs to identify individuals and organizations. In order to understand who is transferring what where when, your database must establish a connection between a user's ORCID and their local account on your system. This connection is a form of federated identity management, similar to Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication services offered by various platforms.

Endpoint Recommendations

Create a REST endpoint that accepts an HTTP GET request with a given ORCID as a path parameter or request parameter. This endpoint responds with a body containing a JSON object with two fields:

  • orcid: the ORCID passed as the query parameter
  • username: the local username corresponding to the given ORCID

Error codes should be used in accordance with HTTP conventions:

  • A successful query returns a 200 OK status code
  • An improperly-formed ORCID should result in a 400 Bad Request status code
  • An ORCID that does not correspond to a local user should produce 404 Not Found

Example

For example, suppose we want to find the local username for Josiah Carberry, a fictitious Professor of Psychoceramics at Brown University. The University's federated identity endpoint provides the endpoint https://example.com/dts/localuser/{orcid} that accepts a path parameter {orcid}. We can retrieve Josiah's local username in the University's database by sending an HTTP GET request to

https://example.com/dts/localuser/0000-0002-1825-0097

This produces a responѕe with a 200 OK status code with the body

{
  "orcid": "0000-0002-1825-0097",
  "username": "psyclay"
}

Existing implementations

This particular feature is actually not yet supported by KBase, so the DTS prototype uses a locally-stored JSON file containing an object whose field names are ORCIDs and whose values are usernames for the corresponding KBase users.

  • Example: current workaround (to be updated when JDP and KBase support this!)