Legacy APIs

Warning

The legacy APIs documented in this section are provided for backwards-compatibility, but support for new CKAN features will not be added to these APIs.

API Versions

There are two versions of the legacy APIs. When the API returns a reference to an object, version 1 of the API will return the name of the object (e.g. "river-pollution"), whereas version 2 will return the ID of the object (e.g. "a3dd8f64-9078-4f04-845c-e3f047125028"). Tag objects are an exception, tag names are immutable so tags are always referred to with their name.

You can specify which version of the API to use in the URL. For example, opening this URL in your web browser will list demo.ckan.org’s datasets using API version 1:

http://demo.ckan.org/api/1/rest/dataset

Opening this URL calls the same function using API version 2:

http://demo.ckan.org/api/2/rest/dataset

If no version number is given in the URL then the API defaults to version 1, so this URL will list the site’s datasets using API version 1:

http://demo.ckan.org/api/rest/dataset

Dataset names can change, so to reliably refer to the same dataset over time, you will want to use the dataset’s ID and therefore use API v2. Alternatively, many people prefer to deal with Names, so API v1 suits them.

When posting parameters with your API requests, you can refer to objects by either their name or ID, interchangeably.

Model API

Model resources are available at published locations. They are represented with a variety of data formats. Each resource location supports a number of methods.

The data formats of the requests and the responses are defined below.

Model Resources

Here are the resources of the Model API.

Model Resource Location
Dataset Register /rest/dataset
Dataset Entity /rest/dataset/DATASET-REF
Group Register /rest/group
Group Entity /rest/group/GROUP-REF
Tag Register /rest/tag
Tag Entity /rest/tag/TAG-NAME
Rating Register /rest/rating
Dataset Relationships Register /rest/dataset/DATASET-REF/relationships
Dataset Relationships Register /rest/dataset/DATASET-REF/RELATIONSHIP-TYPE
Dataset Relationships Register /rest/dataset/DATASET-REF/relationships/DATASET-REF
Dataset Relationship Entity /rest/dataset/DATASET-REF/RELATIONSHIP-TYPE/DATASET-REF
Dataset’s Revisions Entity /rest/dataset/DATASET-REF/revisions
Revision Register /rest/revision
Revision Entity /rest/revision/REVISION-ID
License List /rest/licenses

Possible values for DATASET-REF are the dataset id, or the current dataset name.

Possible values for RELATIONSHIP-TYPE are described in the Relationship-Type data format.

Model Methods

Here are the methods of the Model API.

Resource Method Request Response
Dataset Register GET   Dataset-List
Dataset Register POST Dataset  
Dataset Entity GET   Dataset
Dataset Entity PUT Dataset  
Group Register GET   Group-List
Group Register POST Group  
Group Entity GET   Group
Group Entity PUT Group  
Tag Register GET   Tag-List
Tag Entity GET   Dataset-List
Rating Register POST Rating  
Rating Entity GET   Rating
Dataset Relationships Register GET   Pkg-Relationships
Dataset Relationship Entity GET   Pkg-Relationship
Dataset Relationships Register POST Pkg-Relationship  
Dataset Relationship Entity PUT Pkg-Relationship  
Dataset’s Revisions Entity GET   Pkg-Revisions
Revision List GET   Revision-List
Revision Entity GET   Revision
License List GET   License-List

In general:

  • GET to a register resource will list the entities of that type.
  • GET of an entity resource will show the entity’s properties.
  • POST of entity data to a register resource will create the new entity.
  • PUT of entity data to an existing entity resource will update it.

It is usually clear whether you are trying to create or update, so in these cases, HTTP POST and PUT methods are accepted by CKAN interchangeably.

Model Formats

Here are the data formats for the Model API:

Name Format
Dataset-Ref Dataset-Name-String (API v1) OR Dataset-Id-Uuid (API v2)
Dataset-List [ Dataset-Ref, Dataset-Ref, Dataset-Ref, ... ]
Dataset { id: Uuid, name: Name-String, title: String, version: String, url: String, resources: [ Resource, Resource, ...], author: String, author_email: String, maintainer: String, maintainer_email: String, license_id: String, tags: Tag-List, notes: String, extras: { Name-String: String, ... } } See note below on additional fields upon GET of a dataset.
Group-Ref Group-Name-String (API v1) OR Group-Id-Uuid (API v2)
Group-List [ Group-Ref, Group-Ref, Group-Ref, ... ]
Group { name: Group-Name-String, title: String, description: String, packages: Dataset-List }
Tag-List [ Name-String, Name-String, Name-String, ... ]
Tag { name: Name-String }
Resource { url: String, format: String, description: String, hash: String }
Rating { dataset: Name-String, rating: int }
Pkg-Relationships [ Pkg-Relationship, Pkg-Relationship, ... ]
Pkg-Relationship { subject: Dataset-Name-String, object: Dataset-Name-String, type: Relationship-Type, comment: String }
Pkg-Revisions [ Pkg-Revision, Pkg-Revision, Pkg-Revision, ... ]
Pkg-Revision { id: Uuid, message: String, author: String, timestamp: Date-Time }
Relationship-Type One of: ‘depends_on’, ‘dependency_of’, ‘derives_from’, ‘has_derivation’, ‘child_of’, ‘parent_of’, ‘links_to’, ‘linked_from’.
Revision-List [ revision_id, revision_id, revision_id, ... ]
Revision { id: Uuid, message: String, author: String, timestamp: Date-Time, datasets: Dataset-List }
License-List [ License, License, License, ... ]
License { id: Name-String, title: String, is_okd_compliant: Boolean, is_osi_compliant: Boolean, tags: Tag-List, family: String, url: String, maintainer: String, date_created: Date-Time, status: String }

To send request data, create the JSON-format string (encode in UTF8) put it in the request body and send it using PUT or POST.

Response data will be in the response body in JSON format.

Notes:

  • When you update an object, fields that you don’t supply will remain as they were before.
  • To delete an ‘extra’ key-value pair, supply the key with JSON value: null
  • When you read a dataset, some additional information is supplied that you cannot modify and POST back to the CKAN API. These ‘read-only’ fields are provided only on the Dataset GET. This is a convenience to clients, to save further requests. This applies to the following fields:
Key Description
id Unique Uuid for the Dataset
revision_id Latest revision ID for the core Package data (but is not affected by changes to tags, groups, extras, relationships etc)
metadata_created Date the Dataset (record) was created
metadata_modified Date the Dataset (record) was last modified
relationships info on Dataset Relationships
ratings_average  
ratings_count  
ckan_url full URL of the Dataset
download_url (API v1) URL of the first Resource
isopen boolean indication of whether dataset is open according to Open Knowledge Definition, based on other fields
notes_rendered HTML rendered version of the Notes field (which may contain Markdown)

Search API

Search resources are available at published locations. They are represented with a variety of data formats. Each resource location supports a number of methods.

The data formats of the requests and the responses are defined below.

Search Resources

Here are the published resources of the Search API.

Search Resource Location
Dataset Search /search/dataset
Resource Search /search/resource
Revision Search /search/revision
Tag Counts /tag_counts

See below for more information about dataset and revision search parameters.

Search Methods

Here are the methods of the Search API.

Resource Method Request Response
Dataset Search POST Dataset-Search-Params Dataset-Search-Response
Resource Search POST Resource-Search-Params Resource-Search-Response
Revision Search POST Revision-Search-Params Revision-List
Tag Counts GET   Tag-Count-List

It is also possible to supply the search parameters in the URL of a GET request, for example /api/search/dataset?q=geodata&allfields=1.

Search Formats

Here are the data formats for the Search API.

Name Format
Dataset-Search-Params Resource-Search-Params Revision-Search-Params { Param-Key: Param-Value, Param-Key: Param-Value, ... } See below for full details of search parameters across the various domain objects.
Dataset-Search-Response { count: Count-int, results: [Dataset, Dataset, ... ] }
Resource-Search-Response { count: Count-int, results: [Resource, Resource, ... ] }
Revision-List [ Revision-Id, Revision-Id, Revision-Id, ... ] NB: Ordered with youngest revision first
Tag-Count-List [ [Name-String, Integer], [Name-String, Integer], ... ]

The Dataset and Revision data formats are as defined in Model Formats.

Dataset Parameters

Param-Key Param-Value Examples Notes
q Search-String
q=geodata
q=government+sweden
q=%22drug%20abuse%22
q=tags:”river pollution”
Criteria to search the dataset fields for. URL-encoded search text. (You can also concatenate words with a ‘+’ symbol in a URL.) Search results must contain all the specified words. You can also search within specific fields.
qjson JSON encoded options [‘q’:’geodata’] All search parameters can be json-encoded and supplied to this parameter as a more flexible alternative in GET requests.
title, tags, notes, groups, author, maintainer, update_frequency, or any ‘extra’ field name e.g. department Search-String
title=uk&tags=health
department=environment
tags=health&tags=pollution
tags=river%20pollution
Search in a particular a field.
order_by field-name (default=rank) order_by=name Specify either rank or the field to sort the results by
offset, limit result-int (defaults: offset=0, limit=20) offset=40&limit=20 Pagination options. Offset is the number of the first result and limit is the number of results to return.
all_fields 0 (default) or 1 all_fields=1 Each matching search result is given as either a dataset name (0) or the full dataset record (1).

Note

filter_by_openness and filter_by_downloadable were dropped from CKAN version 1.5 onwards.

Note

Only public datasets can be accessed via the legacy search API, regardless of the provided authorization. If you need to access private datasets via the API you will need to use the package_search method of the API guide.

Resource Parameters

Param-Key Param-Value Example Notes
url, format, description Search-String
url=statistics.org
format=xls
description=Research+Institute
Criteria to search the dataset fields for. URL-encoded search text. This search string must be found somewhere within the field to match. Case insensitive.
qjson JSON encoded options [‘url’:’www.statistics.org’] All search parameters can be json-encoded and supplied to this parameter as a more flexible alternative in GET requests.
hash Search-String hash=b0d7c260-35d4-42ab-9e3d-c1f4db9bc2f0 Searches for an match of the hash field. An exact match or match up to the length of the hash given.
all_fields 0 (default) or 1 all_fields=1 Each matching search result is given as either an ID (0) or the full resource record
offset, limit result-int (defaults: offset=0, limit=20) offset=40&limit=20 Pagination options. Offset is the number of the first result and limit is the number of results to return.

Note

Powerful searching from the command-line can be achieved with curl and the qjson parameter. In this case you need to remember to escapt the curly braces and use url encoding (e.g. spaces become %20). For example:

curl 'http://thedatahub.org/api/search/dataset?qjson=\{"author":"The%20Stationery%20Office%20Limited"\}'

Revision Parameters

Param-Key Param-Value Example Notes
since_time Date-Time since_time=2010-05-05T19:42:45.854533 The time can be less precisely stated (e.g 2010-05-05).
since_id Uuid since_id=6c9f32ef-1f93-4b2f-891b-fd01924ebe08 The stated id will not be included in the results.

Util API

The Util API provides various utility APIs – e.g. auto-completion APIs used by front-end javascript.

All Util APIs are read-only. The response format is JSON. Javascript calls may want to use the JSONP formatting.

dataset autocomplete

There an autocomplete API for package names which matches on name or title.

This URL:

/api/2/util/dataset/autocomplete?incomplete=a%20novel

Returns:

{"ResultSet": {"Result": [{"match_field": "title", "match_displayed": "A Novel By Tolstoy (annakarenina)", "name": "annakarenina", "title": "A Novel By Tolstoy"}]}}

tag autocomplete

There is also an autocomplete API for tags which looks like this:

This URL:

/api/2/util/tag/autocomplete?incomplete=ru

Returns:

{"ResultSet": {"Result": [{"Name": "russian"}]}}

resource format autocomplete

Similarly, there is an autocomplete API for the resource format field which is available at:

/api/2/util/resource/format_autocomplete?incomplete=cs

This returns:

{"ResultSet": {"Result": [{"Format": "csv"}]}}

markdown

Takes a raw markdown string and returns a corresponding chunk of HTML. CKAN uses the basic Markdown format with some modifications (for security) and useful additions (e.g. auto links to datasets etc. e.g. dataset:river-quality).

Example:

/api/util/markdown?q=<http://ibm.com/>

Returns:

"<p><a href="http://ibm.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://ibm.com/</a>\n</p>"

is slug valid

Checks a name is valid for a new dataset (package) or group, with respect to it being used already.

Example:

/api/2/util/is_slug_valid?slug=river-quality&type=package

Response:

{"valid": true}

munge package name

For taking an readable identifier and munging it to ensure it is a valid dataset id. Symbols and whitespeace are converted into dashes. Example:

/api/util/dataset/munge_name?name=police%20spending%20figures%202009

Returns:

"police-spending-figures-2009"

munge title to package name

For taking a title of a package and munging it to a readable and valid dataset id. Symbols and whitespeace are converted into dashes, with multiple dashes collapsed. Ensures that long titles with a year at the end preserves the year should it need to be shortened. Example:

/api/util/dataset/munge_title_to_name?title=police:%20spending%20figures%202009

Returns:

"police-spending-figures-2009"

munge tag

For taking a readable word/phrase and munging it to a valid tag (name). Symbols and whitespeace are converted into dashes. Example:

/api/util/tag/munge?tag=water%20quality

Returns:

"water-quality"

Status Codes

Standard HTTP status codes are used to signal method outcomes.

Code Name
200 OK
201 OK and new object created (referred to in the Location header)
301 Moved Permanently
400 Bad Request
403 Not Authorized
404 Not Found
409 Conflict (e.g. name already exists)
500 Service Error