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How to use Echidna

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Philippe Le Hegaret edited this page Oct 10, 2016 · 50 revisions

Check your document using Specberus

Make sure your document passes Specberus with the Echidna option and WD or WG-NOTE profile. If your document is a non REC-track document, check the option "Rec-track status, but document is not really on Rec-track."

Group decision

Every publication needs to point to the Working Group decision to publish, per the 2015 Process: "must record the group's decision to request publication. Consensus is not required, as this is a procedural step".

Request a publication

The publication system works using UTC (GMT/Zulu)-time. As such, the date of your document MUST match the UTC date.

Two options are available to send a request to Echidna. You can either submit a URL/manifest or a TAR file.

URL or manifest

To use the automated publication workflow system, you first need to get a token associated with a specification. Ask your team contact to generate a token for your specification.

Once you have a document, a Group decision, and a token, you can submit your document via a POST:

curl 'https://labs.w3.org/echidna/api/request' --data 'url=<documentUrl>&decision=<decisionUrl>&token=<token>'

You may also want to publish a compound document. If that's the case, you can submit a manifest instead of an html page. The documents not starting with '<' will be considered as manifests. Note: the first file listed in the manifest will be renamed Overview.html.

The POST will return a unique identifier you can use to get the status of the request.

Using Echidna publication without CURL

If you don't use curl, you may use an online tool such as HURL. Just fill in the online form using the POST command with URL 'https://labs.w3.org/echidna/api/request' and the following 3 parameters: (url =, decision=, token=)

Another alternative is to use an Addon Browser:

  1. For Firefox 'http Requester'
  2. for Chrome 'Request Maker'

Both Addons Browser are command line with the URL + the 3 parameters (url, decision et token).

TAR file

You can also send a TAR file directly to Echidna. Its contents will be extracted on the server (read more):

curl 'https://labs.w3.org/echidna/api/request' --user '<username>:<password>' -F "tar=@/some/path/spec.tar" -F "decision=<decisionUrl>"

Note: If you want to submit a tar to Echidna, the request must be authenticated with your <username> and <password>. You must also be participating in the group delivering the specification.

Like the previous method, the POST will return a unique identifier if the request has been correctly authenticated.

Result of the request

Email notification

After a request has been processed, an email is sent to public-tr-notifications@w3.org with the result of the publication. Check the mailing list archive.

/api/status

Another way to check the status of the request is to query /api/status with the unique identifier returned by the POST:

GET http://labs.w3.org/echidna/api/status?id=<id>

Current limitations

  • only ordinary Working Drafts and ordinary Notes (no FPWD, FPWG-Note, LC, CR, PR, or REC)
  • previous version must be a FPWD, ordinary WDs or Notes (ie no LCWD)
  • only documents using the HTML5 format (no HTML4 or XHTML 1 documents)
  • only documents published under the September 1, 2015 process document
  • no change of Group or shortname
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