A metadata file is used to provide information about an Application Programming Interface (API). Metadata files contain the following information of an API, as shown in the example below:
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<api id="16bdb6fdf38e8ced9e907a4eea1f68c5" dataversion="2.0">
<name>Phone Parser API</name>
<description>This API is used to parse and validate phone numbers.</description>
<type>c++</type>
<collection>commonservices</collection>
<libs>
<lib name="CommonEngine.lib" />
</libs>
<release category="public" sinceversion="1.0" deprecatedsince="9.1"/>
<attributes>
<htmldocprovided>yes</htmldocprovided>
<adaptation>no</adaptation>
</attributes>
</api>
Metadata files are identified by the extension .metaxml. This way, the Carbide.c++ development environment can easily associate these files with the API Metadata Editor tool.
Metadata can then be viewed, example, in the API Query tool (Carbide > API Query), as well as in the common Software Development Kit (SDK) documentation if the API belongs to an SDK.
The name of the file comes from the API name and should be the same as the API directory name. For example, if the API directory is phone_parser_api, the corresponding metadata file name should be phone_parser_api.metaxml. The file is located directly under the API's own directory.