News Article

Persistent URLs for ISO/TC 211 codelist definitions

June 10, 2026

ISO/TC 211 codelist definitions now have a single, stable, dereferenceable home on schemas.isotc211.org.

The problem

ISO/TC 211 schemas use typed enumerations whose valid values are defined in codelist catalogues — XML files that list each code, its identifier, and its definition. For years these catalogues had no persistent URL. The files moved between directories, URLs broke, and external communities — INSPIRE validators, DCAT specification authors, linked-data practitioners — could not rely on a stable address.

See the related issues:

The solution

The comprehensive codelist catalogue (codelists.xml) — covering all ISO/TC 211 standards from 19107 through 19163 — has been moved to a stable, cross-cutting location:

https://schemas.isotc211.org/resources/codelists/codelists.xml

Every codelist and every individual code value is addressable via a fragment identifier:

https://schemas.isotc211.org/resources/codelists/codelists.xml#ISO19115-1.1.cit.CI_RoleCode
https://schemas.isotc211.org/resources/codelists/codelists.xml#ISO19115-1.1.cit.CI_RoleCode_custodian

Backward compatibility

The previous URL (/Resources/codelists.xml) is preserved via a transparent file-copy redirect — XML parsers that dereference codeList attributes get the real XML content, not an HTML redirect page.

Browseable HTML pages

70 codelist definitions are now available as interactive HTML pages at /resources/codelists/, generated directly from the source XML. Each page shows the codelist identifier, definition, canonical URI, and a table of all defined values.

For example, CI_RoleCode lists all responsibility role codes from ISO 19115-1.

What changed

  • Moved codelists.xml from 19115/resources/codelists/ to the cross-cutting resources/codelists/ directory
  • Updated 515 internal cross-references and 421 codeList URLs in example files to the new canonical path
  • Archived superseded files (codelists1.xml, 19157/-1/codelists.xml)
  • Added a Jekyll generator that parses the catalogue XML and produces static HTML pages
  • Added “Codelists” to the site header navigation

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