Important changes to the IATI Registry API

  • Aug. 1, 2016

The IATI Registry will be upgraded in the week beginning Monday 10 October 2016 and will result in changes to the API. Working with our suppliers, we will update the CKAN software and fix over 250 bugs, improving your experience of the Registry.

Users of the IATI Registry API are advised to:

  • Understand what’s changing: See our list below of the most important technical changes to the API’s functionality and responses. View the full list of changes on the CKAN changelog. (Note we are upgrading from CKAN version 2.1.4 to version 2.5.2);
  • Test your application: use our new staging site to understand the adjustments that you may need to make to ensure you are not adversely affected by the upgrade. Data from the current live registry will be replicated on this staging site fortnightly from Tuesday 16th August. At this point, any changes made to the staging site will be overwritten with live data;

If you do not use the API then no action is needed, as this upgrade will result in virtually no changes to the way that users interact with the IATI Registry website. Once the upgrade is completed, all publishers’ data will be preserved.

We will provide advance notice of any downtime during the upgrade and in the meantime, work closely with our suppliers to ensure that the process goes smoothly. Please email the IATI Technical Team for more information.

Technical API changes to highlight:

  • package_purge API action added (added in CKAN v2.5.2).
  • revision_list API action now has paging (changed in CKAN v2.5.1).
  • The package_show API call does not return the tracking_summary, keys in the dataset or resources by default any more (changed in CKAN v2.4).
  • group_show and organization_show API calls no longer return the datasets by default. Users of this API call will need to pass include_datasets=True to include datasets in the response (changed in CKAN v2.4).
  • The vocabulary_show and tag_show API calls no longer returns the packages key – i.e. datasets that use the vocabulary or tag. However tag_show now has an include_datasets option (changed in CKAN v2.4).
  • The action API (v3) no longer returns the full help for the action on each request. It rather includes a link to a separate call to get the action help string (changed in CKAN v2.3).
  • Ability for users to re-generate their own API keys (added in CKAN v2.3).
  • Able to list private datasets via the API (added in CKAN v2.3).
  • The action API (v3) no longer returns the full help for the action on each request. It rather includes a link to a separate call to get the action help string (changed in CKAN v2.3).
  • The user_show API call does not return the datasets, num_followers or activity keys by default any more (changed in CKAN v2.3).
  • package_search now returns results with custom schemas applied like package_show, ause_default_schema parameter was added to request the old behaviour (changed in CKAN v2.2).