The CKAN RESTful API

Design Questions

• What are the URIs?
• What's the format?
• What methods are supported at each URI?
• What status codes could be returned?

URLs

• http://ckan.net/api/rest/package/list/:page
• http://ckan.net/api/rest/package/create/:name
• http://ckan.net/api/rest/package/update/:name
• http://ckan.net/api/rest/package/read/:name

Data Formats

Request	HTTP Parameters
Response	JSON

Methods

Action	Methods
list	GET
create	POST
update	POST
read	GET

Status Codes

Action-Method	Success	Exception
list GET	200	400 Invalid Request, 404 Not Found
create POST	200	400 Invalid Request, 409 Conflict
update POST	200	400 Invalid Request
read GET	200	404 Not Found

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POST Method Params

Create POST

Name	Value
name	lower case alphanumeric string, optionally with dashes and underscores, string length at least 2 characters

Update POST

Name	Value
name	established name string (can't be updated)
title	string
url	string
download_url	string
licences	list of license ids
tags	space-separated list of tag strings
notes	multi-line string
log_message	string

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Current Development Issues

• How does a machine client acquire and select from the package license options?
• Can the above POST parameter data types be specified more formally?