[ckan-discuss] Resource Formats, Mimetypes etc

Thu Apr 21 19:03:49 BST 2011

Discussion today in the community meetup about resource formats.

Current agreed standard for Resource Format strings:

<http://wiki.ckan.net/Creating_and_editing_Packages#Resource_Format_Strings>

This "supports":

* Straightforward file extensions formats e.g. 'csv', 'xls'
* Different 'kinds' of resource (api/file/examples/service) api/sparql, service
* Nested resources (this is zipped json = zip:json)
* A resource containing multiple formats (xml-or-json -- not perfect!)

Suggested changes:

1. Introduce a kind field on Resource which contains api/file/example/
(rather than having this in format)
2. Introduce mimetype on Resource which is a proper mimetype (and
should be mimetype of 'outer' object e.g. zipfile for zipped json)
3. Format is the 'unparsed' version that is user-provided. Still keeps
conventions for nested and 'or' resources and its simple approach
(e.g. can just csv or xls)

Does this sound sensible?

Rufus