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?