Discussion

Who is using the Registry API?

Dale Potter
Dale Potter • 20 April 2016

The IATI Technical Team are exploring upgrading CKAN, the software which powers the IATI Registry. No decision has been made to upgrade at this time, we are merely scoping the implications in order to make an informed decision and plan any possible upgrade.

In a case where an upgrade does go ahead, there may be some changes to API functionality, which we are engaging with CKAN suppliers Open Knowledge Foundation to fully understand and - if necessary - establish migration processes.

In light of this, it would be good to understand which calls and API endpoints are being used by the community?

Comments (9)

Anonymous

Hi Dale Potter - yes please keep us / this forum updated on upgrading when/how. We discussed this with Wendy Rogers as well. Thanks for keeping us in the loop & good luck with the upgrade …

Rolf Kleef
Rolf Kleef

I am using a version of this, yes, although it could benefit from an update now that the number of publishers is growing and updates can be done more efficiently. But it works for now

Mark Brough
Mark Brough

I think it would be helpful to outline the changes that would result from upgrading CKAN. As far as I understand it, given that the API endpoints are versioned and the changes are mostly backward-compatible (though they weren’t 100% backward-compatible in the last upgrade), it shouldn’t have much of an effect. But that would be good to check. My understanding is that the Registry already uses the CKAN Action API (v3), so there would presumably be limited changes.

In Bangladesh we are using the IATI Datastore to retrieve data. I assume there would be no effect on that, or that the Datastore would be adjusted as necessary to ensure continuity of service.

Kasper Brandt
Kasper Brandt

Within Akvo’s RSR, we haven’t made use of the Registry’s API yet, but we’re planning to extend the functionality to fully automate publishing to the Registry through the API, and to check which of the generated IATI files in RSR are actually registered in the Registry.

This is longer term planning though, so for now no use of the API yet, but thanks for the heads-up.

Gr, Kasper

Alberto Amaro
Alberto Amaro

Hi!
Yes. Please, it’s very interesting to keep us updated if any backward compatibility could be affected.

In my case. I developed (and it’s still working) the IATI-RDA (REGISTRY & DATA ANALYZER) application that includes several registry connections using CKAN.

best regards.
Alberto Amaro

Dale Potter
Dale Potter

Many thanks again to everyone for your comments - aside from gaining understanding things to be aware of in functionality, it’s great to know how the community the Registry API is being used.

As an update, we have been in discussions with Open Knowledge Foundation (the suppliers of the IATI Registry) and we would expect to upgrade from our current version of CKAN (v2.1.4) to v2.5.2. No upgrade timetable has been set and we will ensure there is a good amount of time for testing as part of the upgrade process.

However, an enabling step for this upgrade will be migration to a new server, which will involve some downtime next Thursday evening (UK time). Further information is outlined in a separate post however I wanted to post here as an additional flag.

Image removed. Scheduled downtime for the IATI Registry (Thursday 23 June) Notifications
The IATI Registry will be undergoing scheduled maintenance on Thursday 23 June and will be unavailable from 19:00 - 23:00 UK time. During this time, the website will not be browsable and the API will be offline. This will mean that IATI publishers will not be able to register new datasets or view/edit dataset metadata. However, publishers will still be able to amend the IATI data they’ve already published and all existing data will remain available during this time (as the Registry merely stor…

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