[ckan-dev] Handle System extensions for CKAN?

Mon Jan 21 15:59:06 UTC 2013

If I understand right, you want to have different types of datasets, and
the metadata fields that a type of dataset has (and presents to the user
to be filled in) depends on an externally-hosted RDF file that defines
the type?

This should be doable using a CKAN IDatasetForm plugin, I think.

However for the data files themselves (i.e. the "resources" in CKAN
language) there is no corresponding IResourceForm plugin interface yet,
CKAN's resource form is not customisable in the way that its dataset
form is yet. You _can_ add arbitrary key, value pairs to resources just
like you can to datasets, but for resources you have to do this over the
API, because the web form isn't customisable. You could implement your
own web form for creating and updating resources though, I believe this
might be possible to do either with a CKAN extension or with a
standalone web app (communicating with a CKAN instance via CKAN's API).

On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 09:24:52AM -0500, John Erickson wrote:
> Hi Everyone!
> 
> We're working on extending the CKAN deposit workflow to including
> object registration with esp. the Handle System. This will include
> basic PID generation/registration, type-based metadata collection and
> deposit, and of course data deposit (or "deposit" of external download
> link).
> 
> We're curious if anyone has any lessons-learned from hacking the basic
> CKAN ingest workflow in that way: calling out to third party
> registration systems, etc. One of the big issues we'll be facing is
> implementing a type registry, in which the metadata template presented
> to the user is based on a Handle-named object type, which will be
> defined esp. by an RDF schema linked to from the Handle record (so the
> CKAN metadata template will need to be driven by an external
> definition, not hard-coded in an extension).
> 
> Thoughts? Thanks!
> 
> John
> PS: In addition to depositing the typed data objects via CKAN (e.g. a
> scientific dataset of a particular type), the data files (e.g. RDF)
> that will define the object types will be deposited in this same way.
> 
> -- 
> John S. Erickson, Ph.D.
> Director, Web Science Operations
> Tetherless World Constellation (RPI)
> <http://tw.rpi.edu> <olyerickson at gmail.com>
> Twitter & Skype: olyerickson
> 
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