yaz-client — Z39.50/SRU client for implementors
yaz-client  [-a ] [apdulog-b ] [berdump-c ] [cclfile-d ] [dump-f ] [cmdfile-k ] [size-m ] [marclog-p ] [proxy-addr-q ] [cqlfile-t ] [dispcharset-u ] [auth-v ] [loglevel-V] [-x] [server-addr]
yaz-client is a Z39.50/SRU client (origin) with a simple command line interface that allows you to test behavior and performance of Z39.50 targets and SRU servers.
From YAZ version 4.1.0 yaz-client may also operate as a Solr Web Service client.
   If the server-addr is specified, the client creates
   a connection to the Z39.50/SRU target at the address given.
  
When yaz-client is started it tries to read commands from one of the following files:
Command file if it is given by option -f.
      .yazclientrc in current working directory.
     
      .yazclientrc in the user's home directory.
      The value of the $HOME environment variable is used to determine
      the home directory. Normally, $HOME is only set
      on POSIX systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris.
     
filename
       If specified, logging of protocol packages will be appended
       to the file given. If filename is
       specified as -, the output is written
       to stdout.
      
filename
       If specified, YAZ will dump BER data in readable notation
       to the file specified. If filename
       is specified as - the output is written
       to stdout.
      
filenameIf specified, CCL configuration will be read from the file given.
dump
       If specified, YAZ will dump BER data for all PDUs sent and received
       to individual files, named
       dump.DDD.raw,
       where DDD is 001, 002, 003, ...
      
cmdfile
      Reads commands from cmdfile. When
      this option is used, YAZ client does not read .yazclientrc
      from current directory or home directory.
      
sizeSets preferred messages and maximum record size for Initialize Request in kilobytes. Default value is 65536 (64 MB).
filenameIf specified, retrieved records will be appended to the file given.
proxy-addrIf specified, the client will use the proxy at the address given. YAZ client will connect to a proxy on the address and port given. The actual target will be specified as part of the InitRequest to inform the proxy about the actual target.
filenameIf specified, CQL configuration will be read from the file given.
displaycharsetIf displaycharset is given, it specifies name of the character set of the output (on the terminal on which YAZ client is running).
auth
       If specified, the auth string
       will be used for authentication.
      
-v level
     level.
       Level is a sequence of tokens separated by comma. Each token
       is a integer or a named LOG item - one of
       fatal,
       debug,
       warn,
       log,
       malloc,
       all,
       none.
      Prints YAZ version.
Makes the YAZ client print hex dumps of packages sent and received on standard output.
The YAZ client accepts the following commands.
open zurl
    Opens a connection to a server. The syntax for
      zurl is the same as described
      above for connecting from the command line.
     
Syntax:
      [(tcp|ssl|unix|http)':']host
      [:port][/base]
     
quit
    Quits YAZ client
find querySends a Search Request using the query
      given. By default the query is assumed to be PQF. See command
      querytype for more information.
     
delete setnameDeletes result set with name setname
      on the server.
base base1
     base2 ...
    Sets the name(s) of the database(s) to search. One or more
      databases may be specified, separated by blanks. This command overrides
      the database given in zurl.
     
show 
     [start[+number
     [+resultset]]]
    Fetches records by sending a Present Request from the start
      position given by
      start
      and a number of records given by number,
      from the result set resultset.  If
      start is not given, then the client
      will fetch from the position of the last retrieved record plus 1. If
      number is not given, then one record will
      be fetched at a time. If resultset is not
      given, the most recently retrieved result set is used.
     
scan term
    Scans
      database index for a term. The syntax resembles the syntax
      for find.
      If you want to scan for the word water you could
      write
     
      scan water
     but if you want to scan only in, say the title field, you would write
      scan @attr 1=4 water
     setscan set term
    scanpos pos
    scansize size
    scanstep step
    sort sortspecs
    Sorts a result set. The sort command takes a
      sequence of space-separated sort specifications, with each sort
      specification consisting of two space-separated words (so that the
      whole specification list is made up of an even number of words).
      The first word of each specification
      holds a field (sort criterion) and the second holds flags.
      If the sort criterion includes = it is assumed
      that the SortKey is of type
      sortAttributes using Bib-1: in this case
      the integer before = is
      the attribute type and the integer following =
      is the attribute value.
      If no = character is in the criterion, it is treated
      as a sortfield of type InternationalString.
      The flags word of each sort specification must consist of
      s
      for case sensitive or i for case insensitive, and
      < for ascending order or >
      for descending order.
     
sort+
    Same as sort but stores the sorted
      result set in a new result set.
     
authentication openauth
    Sets up an authentication string if a server requires
      authentication (v2 OpenStyle). The authentication string is first
      sent to the server when the
      open command is
      issued and the Z39.50 Initialize Request is sent, so this command
      must be used before open in order to be effective.
      A common convention for the authopen string
      is that the username - and password is separated by a slash, e.g.
      myusername/mysecret.
     
sru method version
    Selects Web Service method and version.
      Must be one of post,
      get, soap (default)
      or solr. Version
      should be either 1.1, 1.2 or 2.0 for SRU.
      Other versions are allowed - for testing
      purposes (version negotiation with SRU server).
      The version is currently not used for Solr Web Services
     
list_all
    This command displays status and values for many settings.
lslb n
    Sets the limit for when no records should be returned together with the search result. See the Z39.50 standard on set bounds for more details.
ssub n
    Sets the limit for when all records should be returned with the search result. See the Z39.50 standard on set bounds for more details.
mspn n
    Sets the number of records that should be returned if the
      number of records in the result set is between the values of
      lslb and ssub.
      See the
      
       Z39.50 standard on set bounds
      
      for more details.
     
status
    Displays the values of lslb,
      ssub and mspn.
     
setname
    Switches named result sets on and off. Default is on.
cancel
    Sends a Trigger Resource Control Request to the target.
facets spec
    Specifies requested facets to be used in search. The notation is specified in Section 8, “Facets”.
format oid
    Sets the preferred transfer syntax for retrieved records. yaz-client supports all the record syntaxes that currently are registered. See Z39.50 Record Syntax Identifiers for more details. Commonly used records syntaxes include usmarc, sutrs and xml.
elements e
    Sets the element set name for the records. Many targets support element sets B (for brief) and F (for full).
close
    Sends a Z39.50 Close APDU and closes connection with the peer
querytype type
    Sets the query type as used by command
      find.
      The following is supported:
      prefix for
      Prefix Query Notation (Type-1 Query);
      ccl for CCL search (Type-2 Query),
      cql for CQL (Type-104 search with CQL OID),
      ccl2rpn for
      CCL to RPN conversion (Type-1 Query),
      cql2rpn for
      CQL to RPN conversion (Type-1 Query).
     
attributeset set
    Sets attribute set OID for prefix queries (RPN, Type-1).
refid id
    Sets reference ID for Z39.50 Request(s).
itemorder
     type no
    Sends an Item Order Request using the ILL External.
      type is either 1 or 2 which corresponds to
      ILL-Profile 1 and 2 respectively. The no
      is the Result Set position of the record to be ordered.
     
update
     action
     recid
     doc
    Sends Item Update Request. The action
      argument must be the action type: one of insert,
      replace, delete and
      update. The second argument,
      recid, is the
      record identifier (any string). Third argument which is optional is
      the record document for the request. If doc is preceded with
      "<", then the following characters are treated as a filename
      with the records to be updated. Otherwise doc is treated as
      a document itself. The doc may also be quoted in double quotes.
      If doc is omitted, the last received record (as part of present
      response or piggybacked search response) is used for the update.
     
source
     filename
    Executes list of commands from
      file filename, just like 'source' on
      most UNIX shells. A single dot (.) can be used
      as an alternative.
     
!
     args
    Executes command args in subshell
      using the system call.
     
push_command
     command
    The push_command takes another command as its argument. That command is then added to the history information (so you can retrieve it later). The command itself is not executed. This command only works if you have GNU readline/history enabled.
set_apdufile
     filename
    Sets that APDU should be logged to file
      filename. Another way to achieve
      APDU log is by using command-line option -a.
     
set_auto_reconnect
     flag
    Specifies whether YAZ client automatically reconnects if the target closes connection (Z39.50 only).
      flag must be either
      on or off.
     
set_auto_wait
     flag
    Specifies whether YAZ client should wait for
      response protocol packages after a request.
      By default YAZ client waits (on) for response packages immediately
      after a command (find, show) has been issued. If off
      is used, YAZ client does not attempt to receive packages automatically.
      These will have to be manually received when command
      
       wait_response
       is used.
     
      flag must be either
      on or off.
     
set_marcdump
     filename
    Specifies that all retrieved records should be appended to
      file filename. This command does the
      same thing as option -m.
     
schema
     schemaid
    Specifies schema for retrieval. Schema may be specified as an OID for Z39.50. For SRU, schema is a simple string URI.
charset
     negotiationcharset
     [displaycharset]
     [[marccharset]]
    Specifies character set (encoding) for Z39.50 negotiation / SRU encoding and/or character set for output (terminal).
      negotiationcharset is the name
      of the character set to be negotiated by the server. The special name
      - for negotiationcharset
      specifies no character set to be negotiated.
     
      If displaycharset is given, it specifies name
      of the character set of the output (on the terminal on which
      YAZ client is running). To disable conversion of characters
      to the output encoding, the special name - (dash)
      can be used.
      If the special name auto is given, YAZ client will
      convert strings to the encoding of the
      terminal as returned by nl_langinfo call.
     
      If marccharset is given, it specifies name
      of the character set of retrieved MARC records from server. See
      also marccharset command.
     
       Since character set negotiation takes effect in the Z39.50
       Initialize Request you should issue this command before
       command open
       is used.
      
MARC records are not covered by Z39.50 character set negotiation, so that's why there is a separate character that must be known in order to do meaningful conversion(s).
negcharset
     charset
    Specifies character set for negotiation (Z39.50). The
      argument is the same as second argument for command
      charset.
     
displaycharset
     charset
    Specifies character set for output (display). The
      argument is the same as second argument for command
      charset.
     
marccharset
     charset
    Specifies character set for retrieved MARC records so
      that YAZ client can display them in a character suitable
      for your display. See charset command.
      If auto is given, YAZ will assume
      that MARC21/USMARC is using MARC8/UTF8 and ISO-8859-1
      for all other MARC variants. The charset argument is the
      same as third argument for command
      charset.
     
querycharset
     charset
    Specifies character set for query terms for Z39.50 RPN queries and Z39.50 Scan Requests (termListAndStartPoint). This is a pure client-side conversion which converts from displayCharset to queryCharset.
set_cclfile
     filename
    Specifies that CCL fields should be read from file
      file filename. This command does the
      same thing as option -c.
     
set_cqlfile
     filename
    Specifies that CQL fields should be read from file
      file filename. This command does the
      same thing as option -q.
     
register_oid
     name
     class
     OID
    This command allows you to register your own object
      identifier - so that instead of entering a long dot-notation
      you can use a short name instead.
      The name is your
      name for the OID, class is the
      class, and OID is the raw OID in
      dot notation. Class is one of: appctx,
      absyn, attet,
      transyn, diagset,
      recsyn, resform,
      accform, extserv,
      userinfo, elemspec,
      varset, schema,
      tagset, general.
      If you're in doubt use the general
      class.
     
register_tab
     command
     string
    This command registers a TAB completion string for the command given.
sleep
     seconds
    This command makes YAZ client sleep (be idle) for the number of seconds given.
wait_response
     [ number]
    This command makes YAZ client wait for a number of
      response packages from target. If number is
      omitted, 1 is assumed.
     
This command is rarely used and is only useful if command
      
       set_auto_wait
       is set to off.
     
xmles
     OID
     doc
    Sends XML Extended Services request using the OID and doc given.
zversion
     ver
    This command sets Z39.50 version for negotiation.
      Should be used before
      open.
      By default 3 (version 3) is used.
     
options
     op1 op2..
    This command sets Z39.50 options for negotiation.
      Should be used before
      open.
     
      The following options are supported:
      search,
      present,
      delSet,
      resourceReport,
      triggerResourceCtrl,
      resourceCtrl,
      accessCtrl,
      scan,
      sort,
      extendedServices,
      level_1Segmentation,
      level_2Segmentation,
      concurrentOperations,
      namedResultSets,
      encapsulation,
      resultCount,
      negotiationModel,
      duplicationDetection,
      queryType104,
      pQESCorrection,
      stringSchema.
     
The simplest example of a Prefix Query would be something like
    f knuth
   or
    f "donald knuth"
   In those queries, no attributes were specified. This leaves it up to the server what fields to search but most servers will search in all fields. Some servers do not support this feature though, and require that some attributes are defined. To add one attribute you could do:
    f @attr 1=4 computer
   where we search in the title field, since the use(1) is title(4). If we want to search in the author field and in the title field, and in the title field using right truncation it could look something like this:
    f @and @attr 1=1003 knuth @attr 1=4 @attr 5=1 computer
   Finally using a mix of Bib-1 and GILS attributes could look something like this:
    f @attrset Bib-1 @and @attr GILS 1=2008 Washington @attr 1=21 weather