[ckan-dev] Deleting non-empty vocabularies via API3

Mon Nov 12 16:36:17 UTC 2012

Hi,

when I try to delete a non-empty tag vocabulary via the API (through HTTP), I get an internal server error. Checking the logs, this turns out to be a consistency error raised by  sqlalchemy:

Error - <class 'sqlalchemy.exc.IntegrityError'>: (IntegrityError) update or delete on table "vocabulary" violates foreign key constraint "tag_vocabulary_id_fkey" on table "tag"
DETAIL:  Key (id)=(21421955-7560-467c-af30-9f790b73e6ae) is still referenced from table "tag".
 'DELETE FROM vocabulary WHERE vocabulary.id = %(id)s' {'id': u'21421955-7560-467c-af30-9f790b73e6ae'}
URL: http://33.33.33.10:5000/api/action/vocabulary_delete

The error makes sense, but I'm wondering if it would be useful to extend the API to also allow the deletion of non-empty vocabularies, possibly via a parameter (not sure what best practice in API design is). At the very least, it would be cool if the error message coming back in the response had more information in it.

Cheers,
Knud