ckanext-recombinant

This extension creates datasets and datastore tables for all organizations in a ckan instance and allows combining the data from all tables into a single CSV for exporting.

This lets us use CKAN’s authentication to restrict users to update only their organizations’ tables but have all values available as a single dataset for our public site.

Add this plugin to your CKAN configuration and link to the table description file:

ckan.plugins = datastore recombinant

recombinant.tables = file:///.../mytables.json

#   module-path:file name may also be used, e.g:
#
# recombinant.tables = ckanext.atisummaries:recombinant_tables.json
#
#   will try to load "recombinant_tables.json" from the directory
#   containing the ckanext.atisummaries module

Example Table Description File

[
  {
    "dataset_type": "ati-summaries",
    "title": "ATI Summaries",
    "fields": [
      {
        "label": "Request number",
        "datastore_id": "request_number",
        "datastore_type": "text",
        "xls_column_width": 15
      },
      {
        "label": "Pages",
        "datastore_id": "pages",
        "datastore_type": "int",
        "xls_column_width": 6
      }
    ],
    "datastore_primary_key": "request_number",
    "datastore_indexes": "request_number",
    "xls_organization_info": ["title", "name"],
    "xls_organization_style": "pattern: pattern solid, fore_color gray25;",
    "xls_header_style": "font: bold on; pattern: pattern solid, fore_color light_green;"
  }
]

Supported Datastore Types

Each “fields” entry in the JSON table description file describes a field in the dataset. In particular, its “datastore_type” key codifies its type.

The ckanext-recombinant extension supports the following data type specifications, with their respective semantics:

"datastore_type": "text" The field is a text value, corresponding to a text column in the database. It takes no specific input format in the .xls template. Such fields default to a blank unicode string.

"datastore_type": "int" The field is a numeric value, corresponding to an integer column in the database. It takes a .xls template format using space-separated digit groups; the execution canonicalizes content to an integer on write. Such fields default to zero.

"datastore_type": "year" The field is a year value, corresponding to an integer column in the database. It takes a .xls template format citing a four digit integer; the execution canonicalizes content to an integer on write. Such fields default to zero.

"datastore_type": "month" The field is a month value, corresponding to an integer column in the database. It takes a .xls template format citing a two digit integer, left-zero-padded; the execution canonicalizes content to an integer on write. Such fields default to zero.

"datastore_type": "date" The field is a date value, corresponding to a text column in the database. It takes a .xls template format specifying an ISO 8601 date (yyyy-mm-dd). Such fields default to a blank unicode string.

"datastore_type": "money" The field is a text value, corresponding to a text column in the database. It takes a xls template template format specifying a dollar sign (‘$’) prefix and space- separated digit groups; the execution reduces content to an integral numeric string on write. Such fields default to a blank unicode string.