A cleaner way to prefetch MDQ metadata?

[Wessel, Keith]

Hi, all,

This seemed obvious enough that I thought I'd ask about it before making a feature request because it seems like there must be a reason it's not yet an option.

In showing a colleague how to set up MDQ prefetches for an SP that's running an embedded discovery service using the method documented by InCommon here:

https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/MDQ/prefetch-entity-with-shib

He asked why it had to be so complicated. Specifically, why we have to have a separate block for each prefetch, and why we have to URL-encode entity IDs that are in the URL format when prefetching them.

This made me wonder if it would be possible to create a metadata filter of type prefetch that could be put on the dynamic metadata provider block. Like the include metadata filter, it would just take a list of entity IDs and, on SP start-up, it would automatically fetch them. Since they probably need to be kept as persistent entities in the SP for embedded discovery purposes, it would also make sense to re-fetch them when they expire instead of letting them be removed from the internal cache.

Seems obvious enough o me. Is there a reason it hasn't been done yet, or should I put in a feature request?

Thanks,
Keith