List of improvements to CKAN documentation (result of ticket:904). Should convert most items into sub-tickets as we go along.

Major

• (Make blog.ckan.org into ckan.org and move ckan.org to trac.ckan.org/)
• Document caching system - ticket:841
• Howto guide for writing an extension - started on this at ​http://wiki.ckan.net/Extending_CKAN

Miscellaneous

• Contributors / credits page: ticket:928
• (Data proxy documentation: move it to packages.python.org/dataproxy)
• (List dataapi extensions on http://ckan.org/wiki/Extensions (Name, summary string + point to pypi page ...))
• Document license configuration and license system - ticket:973
• Refactor trac frontpage moving general feature overview to ckan.org
• Create proper roadmap information on ​http://trac.ckan.org/
• Add link to wiki.ckan.net to ckan.org

Rather than polluting the ckan core code base on ckan.net install with ckan.net specific changes these adaptations should be moved out into a dedicated ckan.net theme.

A plain javascript library for interfacing with CKAN would be very useful (why? see below!). It would also be nice to have a pure html + javascript web interface to CKAN both for its own sake and to act as a demonstrator for the library.

Why?

• Development of bespoke interfaces -- much easier to edit html + javascript than to change ckan core
  • E.g. for specific communities e.g. geodata, science
  • Specialized tasks - multi-package editing
• Very easy deployment and integration (e.g. can drop in to getthedata or other sites)

The current oAuth extension tightly couples repoze.who, ckan, and data.no. These components should be decoupled; they also need more tests

(It has been moved into ckanext-dgu)

HRI don't like federation, want to login normal way only. Make this a config option and perhaps even mess with runtime repoze config

When a user visits the site, he/she may only see a login box.

It's handy to be able to create users using the cli (e.g. dgu migration)

Simon has spotted 31 packages whose resources have disappeared in CKAN, but still appear in the Drupal front-end.

Here are the details:

• in CKAN's package view (in web interface, API and dump) no resources display
• but they WERE created in CKAN, as shown by the revision diffs.
• they are in the Drupal front-end

So these resources must have been in the CKAN API at some point and then disappeared without trace/revision to alert Drupal.

Packages affected: anti-social-behaviour-orders-1999-2007 asylum-applications-jan-mar-2009 control-of-immigration-quarterly-statistical-summary-united-kingdom-2009-october-december coroners-statistics-england-and-wales courts-statistics-user-survey-england-and-wales court-statistics-company-insolvency-and-bankruptcy-england-and-wales court-statistics-england-and-wales court-statistics-mortages-and-landlord-possession-england-and-wales crime-in-england-and-wales crime-statistics-local-reoffending-england-and-wales crime-statistics-prison-and-probation-england-and-wales crime-statistics-reoffending-of-adults-england-and-wales crime-statistics-reoffending-of-juvenilles-england-and-wales data_gov_uk-datasets digest-uk-energy-statistics-2008 directgov-central-hottest-pages-monthly directgov-central-internal-search-terms-monthly directgov-section-visits-monthly electricity-consumption-2007 electricity-gas-consumption-2007 energy-consumption-uk-2008 final-energy-consumption-2007 foi-statistics-uk-central-government fuel-poverty-statistics-2007 gas-consumption-2007 gb-reported-bicycling-accidents gb-road-traffic-counts gb-traffic-matrix greenhouse-gas-emissions-2008 high-level-indicators-energy-use-2006 judicial-and-court-statistics-england-and-wales laboratory-tests-and-prices local-authority-carbon-dioxide-emissions-2007 magistrates-courts-statistics-survey-england-and-wales monthly-energy-prices monthly-energy-trends ni_012_refused_and_deferred_houses_in_multiple_occupation_hmos_licence_applications_leading_to_immig ni_013_migrants_english_language_skills_and_knowledge ni_023_perceptions_that_people_in_the_area_treat_one_another_with_respect_and_consideration ni_024_satisfaction_with_the_way_the_police_and_local_council_dealt_with_anti-social_behaviour ni_025_satisfaction_of_different_groups_with_the_way_the_police_and_local_council_dealt_with_anti-so ni_026_specialist_support_to_victims_of_a_serious_sexual_offence ni_029_gun_crime_rate ni_031_re-offending_rate_of_registered_sex_offenders ni_032_repeat_incidents_of_domestic_violence ni_034_domestic_violence_-_murder ni_036_protection_against_terrorist_attack ni_038_drug_related_class_a_offending_rate ni_078_reduction_in_number_of_schools_where_fewer_than_30_of_pupils_achieve_5_or_more_a-_c_grades_at ni_101_looked_after_children_achieving_5_a-c_gcses_or_equivalent_at_key_stage_4_including_english_an ni_109_delivery_of_sure_start_childrens_centres ni_126_early_access_for_women_to_maternity_services ni_127_self_reported_experience_of_social_care_users ni_128_user_reported_measure_of_respect_and_dignity_in_their_treatment ni_181_time_taken_to_process_housing_benefit-council_tax_benefit_new_claims_and_change_events ni_184_food_establishments_in_the_area_which_are_broadly_compliant_with_food_hygiene_law ni_185_co2_reduction_from_local_authority_operations ni_190_achievement_in_meeting_standards_for_the_control_system_for_animal_health ni_194_air_quality_-_reduction_in_nox_and_primary_pm10_emissions_through_local_authorities_estate_an other-fuels-consumption-2006 police-use-firearms-england-wales-2007-2008 prison-end-of-custody-licence-releases-and-recalls-england-and-wales prison-population-england-and-wales probation-offender-management-caseload-statistics-england-and-wales probation-statistics-quarterly-brief-england-and-wales quality-indicators-energy-data-2007 quarterly-energy-prices quarterly-energy-trends road-transport-energy-consumption-2007 sentencing-statistics-england-and-wales statistics-terrorism-arrests-outcomes-2001-2008 ukba-control-of-immigration-statistics-2008 ukba-control-of-immigration-statistics-2008-supplementary-tables uk-energy-in-brief-2008 uk-energy-sector-indicators-background-2008 uk-energy-sector-indicators-key-supporting-2008 uk-exportcontrollists uk-exportcontrol-sanctions uk-export-control-statistics uk-glossary-exportcontrol uk-ipo-offences weekly-fuel-prices

We need a way to group resources by various different factors. The most important of which is timeseries.

The model will look like

Package <o2m> resource_group <o2m> resource

The use cases to this are outlined in this email. ​http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/ckan-discuss/2011-February/000887.html

We can just use the branch name to pull down specific versions of pip requirements so we don't need all the different versions in head.

Remove them and update any client systems.

Cost: 20m

Should have the following features:

• A list of all packages with broken links on the resource
• Under each packages a description of any resources with broken links to include:
  • Link
  • Description
  • Format
  • First found to be broken date

[If you can't do the last one yet, don't worry]

The link for About > 'Project Home Page' on the CKAN.net footer should be changed to point to:

http://ckan.org/

The current link is broken.

Thanks, Jason

Should have user listing at /user/ rather than user account page.

• list users, sorted by number of packages contributed/edited
• Move user home page to /user/{user-id}
• Paginated

Some work done on this to make tests run independently.

Consolidate search API interface (and backend) on solr (solrpy) type interface.

• Support for standard query structure
• Support for facet options

Do not need to change response formats. (Or do we?)

2 options here for advanced features like facets in non-solr:

1. Disable (happens automatically)
2. Implement - suggest using group by etc

Extras

• Front-page tag cloud: change this to use facets
  • Accept this means that if facets not functional in backend we have no tag cloud

Some extensions import pylons features (such as request) at root.

Have encountered following issues:

1. You need to import ckanext before any ckan stuff in your wsgi script (extension stats and dataapi)

2. Running under wsgi daemon mode (normal mode is fine!) the front page (front page only) will not work (does not occur with disqus or synchronous_search but does with stats and dataapi extensions). You get errors like this in the log:

[Mon Jan 17 09:01:19 2011] [error] Exception KeyError: KeyError(-1218594160,) in <module 'threading' from '/usr/lib/python2.6/threading.pyc'> ignored
[Mon Jan 17 09:01:20 2011] [error] Exception AttributeError: "'NoneType' object has no attribute 'clearing'" in <bound method PluginEnvironment.__del__ of  Services for Environment '<default>'

1. Remove contributors list from about page (out-of-date and does not belong there)
   • A "Powered by CKAN" link in footer is enough
2. Add contributors / team / credits page to ckan.org
   • May want to separate credits (e.g. software use), from contributors (also is team different from contributors)
   • (perhaps with photos!) so that people can see who is part of it and from which organisations. (this is medium-term, not really part of this ticket)
3. ? CREDITS.txt file to the source repository and add a link to it on bitbucket for more detailed credits info.

Cost: 1h

Good user interfaces provide feedback to users. We should provide more feedback about the success / failure of actions using message flashing (see ​http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/patterns/flashing/).

We already do some of this (slightly poorly), e.g. on adding an authorization the app says: "X authorization added".

Implementation

• Standardize this process and add section to html for this purpose.
• Already done in other OKFN apps e.g. yourtopia.net, wheredoesmymoneygo and commentonit
• Testing: suggest keeping this very simple

Estimate

• Cost: 0.5h (html etc) + 1h to do some integration

Set up a Mediawiki to contain info on CKAN.net (community) conventions etc.

Have a tagline / description are under main title and set if from ckan.site_description config variable.

Package CKAN as a debian package so it is easier to install.

Currently placeholder text like 'Search ...' is not shown in some browsers (e.g. FF and IE).

This leads to poor UX, for example in top bar search where it unclear whether that box is for login or search.

We should fix this by finding a way to display placeholder attribute in all browsers.

You get redirected for a number of different reasons - often confuses me let alone the average user!

Cost: 1h

Analysis using pg_top reveals orphaed processes:

​https://trac.dataco.coi.gov.uk/projects/datagov/ticket/460#comment:6

This followed switching ckan instances on the dgu machine. Do these hang around forever clogging up a db server? Can switching between instances be smoothed to avoid this?

Looking at: ​http://ckan.net/package/rkb-explorer-acm

'rkb-explorer-resex' gets display multiple times and shouldn't

master ticket

• #884 implement harvest job delete command for an easier life
• #885 move csw code into dedicated ckanext plugin
• #886 move forms api into dgu extension module
• #887 move harvesting code to use generic harvesting module

At the moment, ExtrasField? cannot be used in conjunction with more specific extra fields, such as TextExtraField? or SuggestTextExtraField?.

I'm using v 1.3.1a and get a lot of "WebApp? Error: <type 'exceptions.Exception'>: Couldn't connect to licenses service: <urlopen error (104, 'Connection reset by peer')>" error messages.

Module ckan.forms.package:87 in build_package_form
<<      # Options/settings
           builder.set_field_option('name', 'validate', package_name_validator)
           builder.set_field_option('license_id', 'dropdown', {'options':[('', None)] + model.Package.get_license_options()})
           builder.set_field_option('state', 'dropdown', {'options':model.State.all})
           builder.set_field_option('notes', 'textarea', {'size':'60x15'})
>>  builder.set_field_option('license_id', 'dropdown', {'options':[('', None)] + model.Package.get_license_options()})
Module ckan.model.package:283 in get_license_options
<<      @classmethod
           def get_license_options(self):
               register = self.get_license_register()
               return [(l.title, l.id) for l in register.values()]
>>  register = self.get_license_register()
Module ckan.model.package:278 in get_license_register
<<      def get_license_register(self):
               if not hasattr(self, '_license_register'):
                   self._license_register = LicenseRegister()
               return self._license_register
>>  self._license_register = LicenseRegister()
Module ckan.model.license:46 in __init__
<<              from licenses.service import LicensesService2
                   self.service = LicensesService2(group_url)
                   entity_list = self.service.get_licenses()
               else:
                   from licenses import Licenses
>>  entity_list = self.service.get_licenses()
Module licenses.service:44 in get_licenses
<<          except Exception, inst:
                   msg = "Couldn't connect to licenses service: %s" % inst
                   raise Exception, msg
               try:
                   licenses = loads(response_body)
>>  raise Exception, msg
Exception: Couldn't connect to licenses service: <urlopen error (104, 'Connection reset by peer')>

In order to test migrations properly, we need to test the upgraded database against *all* the tests.

To do this a special flag to nosetests should be added. nosetests --migrations

This flag will make sure that the database is recreated from scratch each time using the migrate repository, bypassing init_db.

Revision history information is not accessible, dgu want this.

(instead of being hard coded)

Purging Revisions

• Delete button displayed on:
  • /revision/list
  • (/package/history)
    • /package/history is problematic because html does not allow nested forms and we already have form for doing diff/comparison.
  • /revision/{id}
• Delete button submits to delete action on revision and changes revision state to 'deleted'.
  • undelete button now displayed and revisions are marked as deleted in some way (e.g. greyed out?)
• Sysadmins then visit /ckan-admin/trash which lists all revisions with deleted state. There is a large button: "Empty trash" (irreversible). Click button purges all revisions with deleted state.

Purging Packages

• Put into deleted state.
• Listed on /ckan-admin/trash
• Separate Empty trash button which deletes all associated revisions.
  • Should be separate from Empty trash for revisions

Current system

• Single purge link on revision listing if a sysadmin which permanently purges the revision and all associated changes (without confirmation atm!)

As a user I want to preview a dataset ('resource') before downloading it.

Implementation

This will be implemented as an Extension

NB: This ticket requires a way to get data out of a remote url (the dataset). We do not want to put this data load/streaming into ckan core due to a) complexity b) load problems (do not want to take ckan out by accidentally pulling in a 1GB file)

1. Need a 'data proxy' - see ticket:698 and ticket:888
2. Preview using javascript in WUI - do this in an extension ​http://bitbucket.org/okfn/ckanext-dataapi

• Create a list of valid predicates for format information (accessURL et al)
• Execute #235 via Google Spreadsheets and include in DCat enrichment

This is a meta-ticket to pull together all the work on SOLR as a backend for CKAN search. (Work on SOLR search has been going on since March of 2010).

3 key aspects of this:

• Index package information in SOLR - ticket:353 - SOLR search indexing (index CKAN)
  • Synchronously (generify Search Index update method to support SOLR or postgres?) - #317: Make search pluggable
  • Asynchroously: via worker with queue
    • #324 Search indexing using notifications
    • #669: Refactor Solr (indexer) to become a generic worker
    • #874: Extract Solr search backend into an extension
• In core support using SOLR backend as well as postgres for queries
  • #317: Make search pluggable (?)
• Integrate into WUI (if changes needed)
  • #672 - Facets in CKAN search results

Extras:

• Solr index testing tool #431

Among other things this will allow the tests to run much quicker.

Add a config option 'template_footer_end' which is inserted in layout_template just before </body>.

This allows sysadmins to add extra items, especially, scripts directly into site without having to do any theming and is especially useful for things like google analytics.

Aside: going forward may want to turn this into a extension.

Cost: 1h

This proposal is to discuss adding a new API for proxying certain spreadsheet data via JSON-P to make it possible to build simple browser apps directly off the API.

See the attached proposal for information.

This is a meta ticket for a bunch of UI changes:

• #839 Package page redesign
• #846 Merge css files
• #850 Show welcome message
• #863 Prompt users to enter missing info
• #864 Search results changes
• #866 Add download formats to search results

Allow a form to specify fields that are required. Currently name and resource url are required.

• Show required fields with asterisks by the input box.
• Resource fields to be included in this.

for helsinki regional infoshare.

revisit link checker from ​http://knowledgeforge.net/ckan/ckanext/file/tip/ckanext/link_checker.py

revisit ollyc's parallel work

look at how this gets used in practice (maybe deprecate in favour of curate tool (suitably wrapped to hide details from the user)

as per http://ckan.org/wiki/UIRedesignSearch