Replace the /revision page with a /activity page showing a site-wide activity stream of all activities in the site. Or perhaps the site-wide activity stream can go somewhere on the front page of the site instead?

Should minify and concatenate JavaScript? and CSS as part of #2354

Currently we have far too many types that are essentially the same format. The new demo theme is using icons for common types. So we need to normalise the common formats into pretty strings. e.g. application/json, JSON, .json and json all should be output as “json”

See the following Basecamp thread for UI examples and discussion.

​https://okfn.basecamphq.com/projects/9558659-demo-ckan-front-end/posts/61906351/comments#comment_179681056

This is not trivial, requires a database upgrade. But 0.12.3 has some nice new features (multiple vcs repository support, ticket comment editing and nicer preview) and the latest spam filter plugin requires 0.12.

​http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/ChangeLog

there's a setting for this

Probably use ansible to do this. To create an instance, create a dir at /etc/ckan/MYSITE, and put MYSITE.wsgi, MYSITE.ini and who.ini files in it. Also put a MYSITE file in /etc/apache2/sites-available. See the example files already present in ckanbuild. Booting a new site should be a single command.

May not handle the postgres/solr/elastic-search side of things yet, could just require the user to set these up herself first and then pass them as args to the create-instance command.

When there are multiple ckan sites installed on a single server via ckanbuild, there needs to be some way of upgrading them all to a new ckan version at once.

It should run the script to create the debian package, boot a VM, install the debian package on the VM, boot a CKAN instance, then run the tests.

Basic revert in the classic wiki form is already support by purging a Revision. However may wish to support:

1. Cases where multiple objects changed in a revision but only want to revert 1 (low priority)
2. Want to revert but have reversion as a new revision of that object.

Seems low priority at present.

Cost: ?

Try to gather proper MIME information for all package resources in CKAN. This is a shared ticket with dcat-tools (​https://bitbucket.org/pudo/dcat-tools), i.e. opendatasearch.org. This can then also be used by ckanrdf, the CKAN RDF conversion service.

Sub-tasks:

• Create a Google Spreadsheet with two Worksheets: "MIME-Mappings", i.e. "CSV" -> "text/csv" and "Name mappings", i.e. "text/csv" -> "Comma-Separated Spreadsheet".
• Collect and map surface forms from all CKANs
• Access this via Swiss and apply, store as a PackageResource? extra field pending #826 (Resource extras).
• Add heuristics for format auto-detections:
  • Map well-known file extensions
  • Recognize obvious magic (Zip, Tar)
  • Peek into Zipfile/Tarfiles?
• Define a convention for generic data types (many CKAN packages have only "Spreadsheet" defined, either detect specific type or set MIME to */tabular-data or similar)
• See also: #816 (Autocomplete for the resource format field)

Overview

Functionality to formally associate packages. We see a need for specific parent-child, inheriting or dependency relations. Not only should this help navigation between packages in the web interface, but it also provides a mechanism to automatically pull dependencies when downloading a data package, in a similar manner as we see in software package management.

Examples

1. There are 27 packages in data.gov.uk to do with the Data4NR's Health Poverty Index. There is currently no common link between these, unless you search for 'HPI' (which also brings up House Price Index), or look under tag 'health' (which also has 600 other results). There should be a link on each HPI package page to navigate to the other 'sibling' HPI packages, and to a 'root' package that has info about the set. This could be partially achieved using the existing tag or group concepts, but a more explicit/official/obvious marking of their relationship could be beneficial.

2. In ckan.net is freedict, a collection of translation dictionaries. You could make each dictionary a child package and use this system. But it would probably be better to make each dictionary a different resource in the same package. (There are other ideas to denote a resource as the data making up a 'portion' of package, or a 'whole' of the package, to help people downloading datasets in the software package style.)

3. OSM has had some Naptan data imported (bus stops), with special permission - i.e. a more liberal license. It would be useful to show this link on both OSM and Naptan packages in CKAN: OSM 'derives from' Naptan with a comment about the license change. I'm not sure this is useful to an automatic download or use of these datasets, but may aid exploration on the CKAN website and understanding the provenance of the bus stop data on it.

4. IPCC collection of data linked / mirrored. Not sure if there are useful relationships here?

5. Dracos gets postbox locations from crowd sourcing and OSM. We could say Dracos 'derives from' OSM.

See more examples discussed here: ​http://trac.ckan.org/ticket/253

Implementation

This is split into four tickets:

• Model: ticket:254
• Read in WUI: ticket:255
• Edit in WUI: ticket:256
• API: ticket:257

No need for write access to be provided API for the moment.

This ticket also encompasses ticket:169 (Package derivations) and ticket:176 (Package dependencies).

Use case

As a ckan administrator I want to easily change options about the CKAN install.

Implementation

Settings to be in DB

Suggested:

## Title of site (using in several places including templates and <title> tag
ckan.site_title = CKAN

## Logo image to use (replaces site_title string on front page if defined)
ckan.site_logo = http://assets.okfn.org/p/ckan/img/ckan_logo_box.png

## Site tagline / description (used on front page)
ckan.site_description = 

## Used in creating some absolute urls (such as rss feeds, css files) and 
## dump filenames
ckan.site_url =

## Favicon (default is the CKAN software favicon)
ckan.favicon = http://assets.okfn.org/p/ckan/img/ckan.ico


## An 'id' for the site (using, for example, when creating entries in a common search index) 
## If not specified derived from the site_url
# ckan.site_id = ckan.net

## API url to use (e.g. in AJAX callbacks)
## Enable if the API is at a different domain
# ckan.api_url = http://www.ckan.net

## html content to be inserted just before </body> tag (e.g. google analytics code)
## NB: can use html e.g. <strong>blah</strong>
## NB: can have multiline strings just indent following lines
# ckan.template_footer_end = 

NB: these will still need to be stored somewhere for loading on initialization. do this in db init function ...

Settings / Options / KeyValues? Table

Columns:

• [namespace]: ? only if KeyValues? (for settings this would then always be settings)
• key
• label
• value (json)
• type (e.g. date and to specify in advance what type should be)
• description
• tags: ?? (for grouping ...)

Loading settings from DB

Do this in ckan/config/environment.py

WUI

• /ckan-admin/settings
• Show label, plus description plus text field

Depends

• Would be part of ckan-admin section and hence build on ticket:833 (Administrative dashboard)

A package discussion page is like a wikipedia discussion page: an editable free text page for people to have discussion/post comments about a given package.

It provides a way for people to make suggestions about a package without needing access to main package.

Admin configures entering read-only mode in one of two places:

• CKAN config file (e.g. ckan.ini)
• environment variable from Apache config

Once enabled, no writes can occur to the database (including user ratings and other usage stats).

This needs more analysis, but the GEMINI2 attribute "metadata point of contact" must be reconciled with the registered publisher (or agent).

This might also be used to filter records harvested from a CSW source, but filtering also needs more analysis, as does distinction between agent and provider.

When a customer logs in as a sysadmin then he/she see all packages, including deleted and pending ones. These are hidden to the average user, but the sysadmin has no idea of this until he clicks on the package and sees at the bottom 'state: deleted'.

It should be more obvious than that on the search view - an icon, message or crossed-out name to packages are deleted.

For example, I will document the following:

• A specific guide on using mercurial when working with our branching and merging policy
  • DONE - ​http://wiki.ckan.net/Becoming_a_CKAN_Developer
• Policy document on how we use tickets, plan sprints and make releases
  • DONE - ​http://wiki.ckan.net/Becoming_a_CKAN_Developer
• How to package software as .deb file for project deployment

I'd love if someone else would write:

• An authorisation tutorial covering the core model, the command line tools and examples of every possible way of using the system
• A HOWTO guide with screenshots for adding a package

Idea is to have stubs for datasets that someone wants but don't yet exist (or haven't been discovered) in the way one has stub pages on a wiki.

We could do this within the existing model by a slight 'abuse' - create a dataset and mark it with a special tag e.g. todo.does-not-yet-exist or similar ...

(Just as we have datasets listed that exist but aren't available ...)

Alternative would be to have a request for datasets subsystem.

I prefer the stub dataset model because it's simpler, provides a simple workflow (as a dataset is found or comes into existence), and the package page provides a natural space in which to accumulate information about what is wanted and what exists.

Implementation

• Agree a new dedicated tag. e.g. todo.does-not-exist

Related

• This ticket has clear links to ​http://getthedata.org/

Move to Changeset model for vdm.

A changeset model is like an Audit-Log model in which we just record Changesets with Change-Objects rather than have Revision-Objects for each Object that is revisioned.

This change would also incorporate significant simplication of vdm.

Statefulness, especially statefulness for relation (esp m2m) is cause of most of the complexity in vdm. It is required because, atm, revision objects have FKs to continuity objects.

This ticket proposes the following changes:

NB: this could be limited just to case of join tables (leaving state stuff on other tables)

• Remove FKs from revision to continuity (or allow for them to be nullable).
  • We could just limit this to m2m stuff
• Delete of an object leads to:
  • Deletion of continuity object
  • Adding an entry in revision table with state set to deleted (we retain state on revision table)

If this is done we will no longer need to worry about filtering on state on relationships as join table will only contain "active" relationships.

If we do this on all tables we remove need for any state awareness in client (e.g. no need to filter tables on active state).

The only disadvantage of this change is that undeletion becomes more problematic (we have to recreate some continuity objects).

Some sort of citation helper. Something small on the dataset and resource page that would show how to cite.

wwaites: Some related thoughts on this from opb: ​http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/opb/papers/ssdbm2006.pdf

timclicks: I'm looking at Dataverse for the first time[0]. It seems very popular in the social sciences. I noticed that there is a recommended citation for each dataset. For example, [1] is has this one: "Targeted Input Programme (TIP) 2000-01", ​http://hdl.handle.net/1902.1/SSC-MWI-TIP2000-01-M1 V1 [Version]"

Implementation

Add a small box at bottom of dataset / resource page (or in sidebar on dataset page) with title "Cite this" with contents like:

%title. %author. Retrieved %date. %site_title.

For resource: %title = %dataset_title. %resource_name.

Could also add export to ref managers (e.g. to bibtex) but that is for later.

When you edit a package in the web form, if the notes field had \n as the End Of Line symbol, it gets lost when you preview or save the package, and the notes field is displayed all on one line.

This can be seen when editing annakarenina (as created by 'paster create-test-data'). The diff shows for example:

- Some test notes
+ Some test notes
?                +

but it would more clearly be shown as:

- Some test notes\n
+ Some test notes
?                ++

This is a significant problem with DGU, since a lot comes in via the API.

It's not clear what we should do about it. We could standardise on \n or \r\n when the form submission comes in. Do different browsers on different platforms do different things with EOLs?

Analysis

Displaying the package: the Markdown processor respects both EOLs when displaying the field, putting each line in a <p> tag.

Creating the package edit form: placed into <textfield>.

Browser displaying package edit form: <textfield> displays \n and \r\n as EOL. But \n\n gets compressed to one EOL. But on submission, both are returned as \r\n.

Receiving the edited package: Somewhere along the line the EOL gets converted to \n\n.

Currently a sysadmin gets an email when an exception is not caught. But there are occasions when we DO want to catch an exception so we can fail nicely for the user, but the sysadmin STILL gets an email to know to fix something. e.g. if there is an exception when search indexes a package. You want to catch the exception and still run any other notify calls.

Apparently the search generator always makes two requests, even if you don't want to see the search results, which might be slow. Can this be optimised?

Maybe we should also provide a second search function that doesn't use the generator - the original simple search function (that leaves the user to deal with limit & offset).

Focusing on improving Action API as the v3 API:

• have an optional parameter of the data_dict called "options". Options would contain items that would get passed into the context. e.g. {"options" : {"ref_package_by": "id"}}.
• instead of using API version to change the way packages are referenced, use the ref_package_by.
• All package_show, group_show etc. to accept an object 'name' as an alternative to object 'id'.
• Action API is v3 of api, replacement for v1 & v2. Default for most urls is still v1, but if url is /api/action then default to v3.

Next steps:

• Add search API (package, resource,
• Add Util API
• Clarify JSONP still applies
• Add doc strings, clarifying parameters

At the moment documentation of config options is duplicated between source (deployment_ini_tmpl in ckan/config which is used to generate user ini file) and the docs.

Suggest we write a script that automatedly generates reference documentation for the config from the source.

May be obsoleted by #277 (some config in db)

Now we don't use postgres search, all the tests involving search now don't need to be skipped when running on sqlite. Should help coders spot earlier if these tests break.

Super ticket: #1151 (viewing geo data)

E.g. preview of ​http://thedatahub.org/dataset/louisvillecrime should bring up a map

ckanext-example needs updating for CKAN 1.5:

• theme changes
• new forms

About: 'ckanext-exampletheme' was created in Spring 2011 as an example CKAN extension that showed how to customise the look & operation of CKAN. This moved to github and renamed 'ckanext-example'.

e.g. ​http://thedatahub.org/dataset/osm%402011-07-12T12%3A16%3A47.590358 gives:

This is the current revision of this dataset, as edited at 2011-07-12 12:16.

but it should say the date 2011-07-12 (which is the data being displayed).

The problem is looking at PackageRevision?, when it might be a tag or extra.

"Proper" issues extension.

• Etherpad: ​http://ckan.okfnpad.org/issues
• Code: ​https://github.com/okfn/ckanext-issues

Overview

• This would be an extension and improvement of existing todo extension - #842 (​https://github.com/okfn/ckanext-issues)
  • Current extension does work but lacks polish
  • Should we polish or do significant improvements?
• Functionality - see etherpad

Steps

• (Rename todo(s) -> issue(s) in existing extension)

Jaakko Louhio reported that the wrong Routes version got installed during CKAN's package install.

He is using Ubuntu 10.04 and he believes it install Routes 1.12.3 instead of what we use which is 1.11.

The admin extension allows deleted datasets to be viewed, but there is no equivalent in the API. The package_list API call filters to just 'state=active' datasets.

'state' could be a parameter on the package_list call

• Easy to call and implement
• But getting permissions right for the different state values may not be easy - maybe a separate logic function is better?

In many places we have @classmethods where simple module-level functions would do (and would be more idiomatic in Python), e.g. the get() classmethods in the model/ classes.

Doing it with module functions lets us type module.function() instead of module.Class.method().

In many cases we're importing classes directly with from module import Class and then doing Class.method(), but from module import foo is bad style: ​http://docs.python.org/dev/howto/doanddont.html

Purging datasets (deleting them fully, not just changing the state to 'deleted') is important for users testing dataset creation over the API on a test CKAN instance.

Without this, they need to resort to more difficult methods such as:

• cleaning and reloading the database
• setting the test datasets to state 'deleted' and also appending a suffix '_00' and incrementing the number until there is no clash of names.

Requested for NHSIC.

Implementation

• This could slot into the Action API.
• Of course we would need to ensure the user's had been given the specific right to purge.
• I suggest we log the full details of the dataset being purged.

• Boot viewer for format/mimetype: application/pdf, application/x-pdf, application/acrobat, applications/vnd.pdf, text/pdf, text/x-pdf
• propose we use pdf.js - ​https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js
• We could also try iframing for browsers with native support but this seems more complex

From #2204

not sure how much we have thought through using this for storing queries / views / visualizations coming from our data viewer. In particular, wonder if this necessitates some kind of support for arbitrary json data ...

### Comments

In the simplest form, right now all I need to store is store the url to the resource plus hashbang config for recline. That would be super easy ...

E.g. on dataset page, on revision page, on user page and on search results.

You get a UnicodeDecodeError?, looks like it tries to decode the ini file as ascii. This is a problem because someone might try to set their site description to something with an umlaut in it, for example.

Start a Java library for interacting with the CKAN Action API.

Currently requires support for Groups, Tags, Resources, and Search.

An example app would be very useful.

Some files that might be uploaded as resources on a dataset, such as some image formats, already contain metadata. For example some jpeg files might contain Exif ( ​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format ) data.

[ ] Obtain list of embedded metadata 'standards'

[ ] Where the metadata is available it should be added as extra fields on the resource that is uploaded.

[ ] HTML?

[ ] Image formats (exif/gif etc)

[ ] PDF

[ ] Eventually consider ...

[ ] MS Office documents

• Decent powered by icon for the Embed for the DataHub?? (make this text customizable and allow html ...)
  • Current icon and text looks really bad
• Embed link uses uuid rather than dataset name (this goes to perma-url question ...)
• Data viewer embed url includes all the resource info (not needed -- just url and backend info ...)
• Embed extension urls do not respect original domain but instead use site_url (I'm guessing). E.g. datahub.io domain ends up with links to embed on thedatahub.org

This is a low priority for the demo site.

Discussion:

​https://okfn.basecamphq.com/projects/9558659-demo-ckan-front-end/posts/62414120/comments

Implementation:

​http://s031.okserver.org:2375/dataset/history/adur_district_spending

This includes the tag page as well for now.

Discussion:

​https://okfn.basecamphq.com/projects/9558659-demo-ckan-front-end/posts/62998445/comments

Implementation:

​http://s031.okserver.org:2375/en/tag

Recline views should have a default table order, being the same as the csv that was imported.

There are 21 undocumented config options in CKAN, some of which are not mentioned in the config file template either:

ckan.admin.name ckan.admin.email ckan.default.group_type ckan.page_cache_enabled ckan.cache_enabled ckan.cache_expires ckan.extra_resource_fields ckan.extra_resource_group_fields ckan.storage.key_prefix ckan.storage.max_content_length ckan.feeds.authority_name * ckan.feeds.date * ckan.feeds.author_name * ckan.feeds.author_link * ckan.mail_from ckan.gravatar_default * ckan.plugins ckan.api_url ckan.auth.profile ckan.datastore.enabled ckan.tracking_enabled

There are also some options that are in the default deployment.ini even though they're deprecated:

ckan.async_notifier carrot_messaging_library ckan.build_search_index_synchronously

See email to ckan-dev from David Read: ​http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/ckan-dev/2012-June/002447.html

It'd be best if the docs could be automatically pulled from the source into sphinx using autodoc, see #1358

Requirements

Require the ability for users to control some level of content that is visible on the home page of their ODS installation. This may be through RSS/Atom feeds (see #2234) or another mechanism but should result in admins being able to change blocks of text on their homepage.

This should not be configuration, but accessible through WUI.

Interface

None

User Stories

• As a system administrator I want to have control over content displayed on the front page beyond featured/popular items.

• As a system administrator I don't want to manage content through having to write an extension.

Tasks

[ ] Analysis

Estimates