How we combined CKAN with WordPress for opendata.swiss

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1. How we combined CKAN with WordPress Stefan Oderbolz CKANCon 2016 4th October 2016
3. Requirements • Use CKAN for the data catalogue ◦ DCAT-AP Switzerland metadata standard ◦ Multilingual content • Arbitrary pages (FAQ, About, Blog) ◦ Multilingual content • Manageable forms (Contact, surveys etc.) • Harvesting of data in DCAT-AP Switzerland format • ...
4. Solution: let’s combine CKAN with WordPress • Loosly coupled: they call each others APIs • We use Apache as a proxy ◦ WordPress runs on port 80 ◦ CKAN runs on port 8080 ◦ Specific routes are proxied on WordPress • User management only on WordPress
7. Goal: one administration interface • Our WordPress plugin (soon Open Source!) let’s us manage CKAN entities: ◦ Datasets ◦ Groups ◦ Organizations ◦ Harvester • We save all data in WordPress and make API calls to “sync” them to CKAN • Form has some usability issues ◦ Too long, no possibility to collapse ◦ Save button is on the top
8. Intermezzo: What is DCAT-AP? • DCAT = Data Catalog vocabulary ◦ Vocabulary to describe catalogs, dataset and distributions • AP = Application profile ◦ Ruleset of mandatory, optional or conditional fields • E.g. “DCAT-AP for data portals in Europe” (DCAT-AP EU) is a standard for public sector data in Europe • DCAT-AP Switzerland is compatible to DCAT-AP EU, but has some additional fields or fields that are currently not used More Information: http://handbook.opendata.swiss/en/library/ch-dcat-ap
11. DCAT-AP XML Import/Export • Easy transfer from test system to production • Reference implementation for data owners, transition to DCAT-AP XML harvester
12. Harvester Dashboard • Manage harvesters from WordPress • Start, stop & clear harvester jobs • Indicator of status • Check the error log of previous jobs
15. APIs are key • To exchange data between the two systems we use APIs on both sides • CKAN ◦ Standard API calls for CRUD operations on all entities ◦ Custom API calls where needed (e.g. dataset count total + per group, to have only one call) • WordPress ◦ Expose WordPress entities as custom API (e.g. “Application”) ◦ To increase performance we save some API responses for 10 minutes in Redis (e.g. Dataset count on frontpage)
16. @odi Questions?