xAPI Registry

As part of the Experience API, you define your own activities, activity types, verbs, extensions and attachments as part of statements. All of these require identifiers that should resolve to a URL that provides all of the spec-required metadata for each. There should be a a place where everyone in the community can find identifiers that have already been defined. It creates problems if there are many different identifiers for a verb, activity, attachment or extension that mean the exact same thing. This makes xAPI data very hard to work with. Data normalization is hard, and we all need to use a registry in order to work with xAPI data well.

We’ve built that registry. It’s called The Experience API Registry.

There are several reasons for this registry:

• Not everyone has (or wants to maintain) their own domain where they can resolve their URIs.
• Not everyone wants to commit to resolving identifiers, as well as build and maintain their tools.
• It’s important to build off of what has already been defined, rather than creating your own for everything.
• It’s a community-centered place where everyone can add and reference verbs, activities, activity types, extensions, attachments and recipes.
• It allows a group that has a particular data model to create a recipe containing all of the identifiers associated with that group’s data model. (See the recipes page.)

xAPI statements will be found in many places and use many identifiers. We want to catalog those identifiers. With our Registry, we’re putting all of the bits and pieces in one place, so you can do all of your querying against one consistent service.

We’ve taken the time to do this right. We still have a lot to add (and we’re taking suggestions from you), but it’s a usable registry tool that will be carefully curated to maintain the highest quality.

Some time ago we built a tool called Test Track. It was a place for the world to test their SCORM content. It was a free resource that bettered the whole SCORM community to the point that it became the number one place in the world to test SCORM content. That’s our vision with the xAPI Registry. We want it to be the most helpful and useful xAPI registry around, built by us, maintained by us and the community, and serving everyone that wants to work with the Experience API.

Check it out. Let us know what you’d change or what you like about it. If you’re interested in using the registry with one of your existing products or systems to register, resolve, and reference the different parts of xAPI statements (via API), let us know about that, too.