Entering data

You can add and edit data in CKAN in many ways, including:

• Directly via the web interface
• Using CKAN’s rich JSON API
• Via custom spreadsheet importers

Harvesting

Many organisations already have their data in repositories with well-defined process and procedures for publishing and managing data. In this case the data can be simply pulled regularly into CKAN from the existing repositories.

To facilitate this model we’ve developed a sophisticated and customisable “harvesting” mechanism which can fetch and import records from many different repository sources, including:

• Geospatial CSW Servers (see geospatial for more information)
• Existing web catalogues
• Simple HTML index pages
• Other CKAN instances

This functionality is used on data.gov.uk to implement a Discovery Metadata Service used to fulfill the UK’s obligations under the EU INSPIRE directive. It is also used on publicdata.eu to pull in information from other catalogues to make them all searchable in one place.

Publisher tools

• Publisher dashboard: reports on dataset status (number of downloads, comments, etc), number of datasets and current status, users belonging to publisher group and permissions.
• Forms: Additionally, we can create portal or publisher specific forms that pre-fill certain fields or have additional required fields to fit individual requirements.

Security

Set the catalogue mode according to the level of security you need: read-only, publicly editable (wikipedia-style), or editable with moderation (using the moderatededits extension). System Administrators have full edit rights. These rights can easily be assigned per dataset or per group of datasets.