[ckan-dev] Feature: new system checkin / status API

[Seb Bacon]

Hi,

For various reasons it's useful and/or important to have a list of
installed CKANs and preferably an admin contact for it too.

I propose a new config flag "report_existence" which when enabled,
pings a central CKAN server to register itself.  It should have some
kind of privacy text associated with it to clearly state what is
reported if set.  The basic registration process would register the
site admin email address, the site name, the site domain name, and the
reporting IP address (in case they've set up the site domain name
wrongly).

An API call would allow us to check the health of the system, update
site name, domain, and admin contact at regular intervals.

We would also write a simple central registry which lists all systems,
and perhaps adds some interesting stats about the systems taken from
their APIs.  When the registry can't contact a site, it should email
the administrator and ask them to either click on a link to remove the
site from the registry, or update the site config file to correct it.

We will need to think what to do for existing systems when they are
upgraded, w.r.t. privacy implications.  Perhaps fire off an email to
the administrator telling them that their site has checked in with the
registry, and telling them how to opt out if they like.

Finally, the central registry should probably have a way of manually
adding extra systems that aren't checking in because they've not been
upgraded.

How does that sound?  Pending full agreement about CEPs, I will write
up a seb-CEP as a test, if we think this is a good idea :)

Seb