[okfn-labs] Introducing the Good Tables web service

[Paul Walsh]

Hi labs,

The Good Tables web service is an API and UI for processing tabular data, being an HTTP wrapper around Good Tables, which was previously announced on OKFN Labs.

* http://goodtables.okfnlabs.org
* https://github.com/okfn/goodtables-web
* https://github.com/okfn/goodtables

The Good Tables web service is currently an alpha release; we invite the community to start using and contributing to it to help us move towards a v1.0 release.

In the current release, the Good Tables web service will validate CSV and Excel files (the first sheet therein) for well-formedness, and, if a JSON Table Schema is supplied, for conformity to the given schema.


API docs can be found here: http://goodtables.okfnlabs.org/api

The run end point accepts GET and POST requests. Here are some example GET requests, using spend publishing data from UK government departments:

* http://goodtables.okfnlabs.org/reports?schema=https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2Fokfn%2Ftabular-validator%2Fmaster%2Fexamples%2Fhmt%2Fbis-modified.json&data=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.uk%2Fgovernment%2Fuploads%2Fsystem%2Fuploads%2Fattachment_data%2Ffile%2F230002%2FMay-2013.csv&ignore_empty_rows=True&row_limit=20000&format=csv&report_limit=1000
* http://goodtables.okfnlabs.org/reports?schema=https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2Fokfn%2Ftabular-validator%2Fmaster%2Fexamples%2Fhmt%2Fbis-modified.json&data=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.uk%2Fgovernment%2Fuploads%2Fsystem%2Fuploads%2Fattachment_data%2Ffile%2F318341%2Fbis-monthly-spend-february-2014.csv&ignore_empty_rows=True&row_limit=20000&format=csv&report_limit=1000

Good Tables can be used for any tabular data, not just send data. We hope to prepare more examples for that as the library moves out of alpha stage.

All contributions are welcome. Feel free to open an issue if you encounter any problems, or just start hacking and send a pull request.