[ckan-discuss] Adding multiple OpenlyLocal URLs/datasets to CKAN?

Sat Jul 17 13:13:32 BST 2010

cc'ing ckan-discuss as this question is of general interest!

On 17 July 2010 12:58, Chris Taggart <countculture at gmail.com> wrote:
> Someone who I followed just asked on twitter for list of police forces
> available as data. I pointed him to the OpenlyLocal list, but it occurred to
> me it's not obvious that we have all these datasets (also police authorities
> and local auth pension funds)
> What do you think about me adding separate entries to CKAN? I'm easy either
> way, and don't want it to appear spammy, but may make it easier for some
> people.

This is a standard question that has come quite a lot :) (and comes up
with data.gov.uk too). The simple answer at the moment is that I don't
think it is worth creating individual datasets/packages for *each*
police force/pension fund on CKAN.

Rather I'd suggest creating a single dataset/package on CKAN and if
possible have a single file for download that has all the relevant
data -- you can always add notes explaining how to get individual data
items via e.g. the API. (You may also want to add Resource item for
the api using the api/... format we are standardizing on [1]).

[1]: <http://wiki.okfn.org/ckan/doc/package#FormatStrings>

If you don't have a single file for the whole lot but single
files/urls for given police forces I'd suggest, for the time being,
having a single Resource item linking to one specific example with a
description string making this clear. Again you can then explain in
the notes how to get all of them. This avoids having to create 500
resources (you can do that if you wish but IMO it is not very useful
-- much better to have a single example and move towards having a tar
ball or url for the whole lot).

Rufus

> --
> -------------------------------------------------------
> OpenlyLocal :: Making Local Government More Transparent
> http://openlylocal.com
> Blog: http://countculture.wordpress.com
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/CountCulture
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