datacats

datacats uses Docker to give you fully self-contained CKAN dev environments on any platform, and easy deployment to any host.

Install

Please see detailed OS-specific installation instructions in the docs.

Create a CKAN environment

datacats create mytown

This will create a new environment called “mytown” in the current directory, new data files in “~/.datacats/mytown” and start serving your new site locally.

Creating environment "mytown"............
Installing ckan requirements
Installing ckan
Installing ckanext-mytowntheme
Initializing database
Starting web server at http://localhost:5306/ ...
admin user password:

Open your brower to the address shown to try out your new site. Enter an admin password at the prompt to create your first sysadmin user.

Customize your theme

In your environment directory you will find “ckan” and “ckanext-mytowntheme” subdirectories. “ckanext-mytowntheme” is a simple example extension that extends some templates and adds some static files.

Customize your Jinja2 templates in “ckanext-mytowntheme/ckanext/mytowntheme/templates”, using the files in “ckan/ckan/templates” as a reference.

Full CKAN extension possibilities are covered in the official CKAN documentation.

The site is run with “paster serve –reload” by default so changes to templates and source files will be visible almost immediately after saving them. Refresh your browser window to see the changes.

For changes to configuration files and new template files added use “reload” to force a site reload.

datacats reload mytown

You may omit “mytown” when running datacats commands from within the environment directory or any subdirectory.

Add CKAN extensions

Many of the 100+ existing CKAN extensions are already compatible with datacats.

First download or clone an extension in to your environment directory.

cd myproject
git clone [email protected]:ckan/ckanext-pages.git

Then add the plugins and configuration options as required by the extension to the “development.ini” file. For ckanext-pages we add “pages” to the list of plugins.

ckan.plugins = mytowntheme datastore image_view pages

Reinstall all extensions and reload the site with:

datacats install

Refresh your browser window to use the new features.

Deploy your environment

To deploy your customized CKAN site copy your source directory to your target host with rsync then run:

datacats init --image-only
datacats start --production --address=<IP-address>