---
title: "Metadata"
slug: "metadata"
updated: 2024-09-20T00:34:27Z
published: 2024-09-20T00:34:27Z
canonical: "help.yahooinc.com/metadata"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.yahooinc.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Metadata

## Abstract

Every resource in DataX is described by an associated metadata JSON.

## Base Metadata

DataX defines a base metadata structure to describe all the resources that it enables and provides provisions for resource-specific extensions.

An API caller typically describes the data by providing values for a few parameters in its POST call. DataX always returns back the complete MetaData object once the resource has been successfully created.

```plaintext
{
        "resourceType":{string},
        "resourceId":{string},
        "createTime”:{string},
        "description”:{string},
        "context" : {string},
        "links" : [
                {
                        "rel"   : "self",
                        "href" : {URI}
                },
                {
                        "rel"   : "describes",
                        "href" : {URI}
                }
        ],
        "status" : {
                "state":{string},
                "lastUpdateTime":{string},,
                "errors" : [
                        {
                                "code" : {string},
                                "message" : {string},
                                "log" : {string}
                        }
                ]
        }
                "bytes": {string},
                "extensions" : { }
}
```

> [!NOTE]
> Note
> 
> The Description field must be provided by an API caller. The Context field is optionally provided by an API caller. All the other fields are generated and returned by DataX.

## JSON Property Descriptions

| **Property Name** | **Type** | **Description** |
| --- | --- | --- |
| resourceType | String | [*output-only*] A unique identifier for a type of resource, e.g., ‘datax- taxonomy’, ‘datax-audience’ etc. Refer to resource documentation for accurate values. |
| resourceId | String | [*output-only*] A case insensitive unique ID for a resource. It will be a string of 1 to 128 characters satisfying the regular expression: ^[a-zA-Z0-9][-_.a-zA-Z0-9]{0,127}$ |
| createTime | DateTime | [*output-only*] An RFC 3339 compliant string representing the date and time of the creation of this resource within DataX. For example, 2009-10- 01T18:30:02Z. |
| description | String | A human friendly description of this resource or its version, up to 1024 characters. |
| context | String | [*optional*] An optional identifier provided by you (the API caller) for your own reference. It can be any UTF-8 string of up to 128 characters. DataX will not try to interpret this property. It will persist this information in the meta data. This could be your reference/resource id for example. |
| links | Array | [*output-only*] A set of useful links. |
| links[].rel | String | [*output-only*] A link relation type. One of [https://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link-relations.xml](https://www.iana.org/assignments/link-relations/link-relations.xml) or a URI formatted custom type with documentation at the URI. This version of DataX provides ‘Self’ (Metadata) and ‘Describes’ (Resource Data) links. |
| links[].href | URI | [*output-only*] Link of type Links[].rel |
| status | Object | [*output-only*] Current status of the Resource |
| status.state | String | [*output-only*] Current state of the resource within DataX. A resource may implement its own set of states.This property will be set to ‘ERROR’ across all resource implementations, in the event that processing of the resource fails and the resource is rejected. |
| status.lastUpdateTime | DateTime | [*output-only*] An RFC 3339 compliant string representing the date and time of the last change in status of this resource. For example, 2009-10- 01T18:30:02Z. |
| status.errors | Array | [*output-only*] A list of errors encountered while processing the resource. Refer to resource specific list of Error codes and associated messages. Note, that a resource may process with errors, but still be successfully ‘accepted’. Presence of errors does not imply that the resource was rejected. |
| status.errors[].code | String | [*output-only*] An individual error code as per Appendix C. |
| status.errors[].message | String | [*output-only*] An error message as per Appendix C. |
| status.errors[].log | String | [*output-only*] Debug log generated by the component which reported this error. This is a free-form text, without any format/structure guarantees, useful only for human debugging purposes. |
| bytes | Number | [*output-only*] Size of file uploaded. |
| extensions | Object | [*output-only*] Resource specific extensions, if any. |