ckanext-ckanpackager

Overview

CKAN extension to provide a user interface to download resources using ckanpackager

Ckanpackager is a stand-alone service that can be instructed to fetch data on a CKAN site using the datastore API, pack the data in a ZIP file and email the link to a given address. See the ckanpackager github page for more information.

Note that to embed the user interface you must provide your own template (typically overriding CKAN's). See the CKAN documentation.

The extension provides an HTML snippet that can be used to replace the Download button on resources. The new button will:

Provide an overlay explaining the link will be sent later on;
If anonymous downloading is enabled, provide a form for users to enter the destination email address;
On resource pages, the button will ensure that currently applied filters and searches are forwarded on to the ckanpackager service.

Usage

Enable the plugin by adding it to ckan.plugins in your configuration file.

To embed the button on a page, add the following to a Jinja2 template:

    {% snippet 'ckanpackager/snippets/package_resource.html',
       res=res, pkg=pkg, bt_class="icon-download", bt_text=_('Download')
    %}

Where res is a resource object and pkg a package object. You can use the above snippet as it to replace the download button in package/resource_read.html

Compatibility

The current version is being developed to work against CKAN's 1251 branch (resource views).

Database Initialisation

This extension uses a database table in the CKAN database to store stats about packaging events. This needs to be initialised before it is used to avoid errors. TO do that simply run this from within your ckan installation env with <ckan_conf_file> replaced with your ckan configuration file's path:

paster --plugin=ckanext-ckanpackager initdb -c <ckan_conf_file>

Configuration

ckanpackager.url: The URL of the ckan packager service, eg. http://ckanpackager.example.com:8765/package
ckanpackager.secret: The shared secret

TODO: Add a configuration item to enable/disable anonymous downloading.