Provide CKAN API documentation for catalog.data.gov

[philipashlock]

This should be featured in the developer section and you can refer to http://www.healthdata.gov/catalog-api as an example

[kvuppala]

We already refer to CKAN API documentation in the APIs section of the Developers page (https://www.data.gov/developers/)

@philipashlock Do we still need to create the above custom documentation?

[rebeccawilliams]

Happy to help build out something more substantial here.

[kalxas]

Perhaps we should add the CSW API HowTo into that developers page, thoughts? https://gist.github.com/kalxas/6ecb06d61cdd487dc7f9

[kalxas]

Hi all, any comments regarding the CSW API as per above? I believe we should advertise it through the developers page.

[kvuppala]

@kalxas I think it is a good idea.

@rebeccawilliams @philipashlock Any thoughts, should we go ahead and add the link to the Developers page.

[rebeccawilliams]

I think linking to this documentation somewhere on the Data.gov/Developers makes sense overall.

Does it make sense to have a § for 'APIs that power Data.gov' and perhaps also note that each Harvest Source's data.json can act as an API, or does it make sense to only link to the CWI API documentation in the Data Harvesting § of the /Developers page?

[rebeccawilliams]

Noting here that we updated the /Developers page in several ways (#532, #534, #535)

Documentation for the Data.gov CKAN API should include:

• [ ] Accessing the Complete Data Catalog Listing (see #294, #295, #315), including workarounds (eg http://healthdata.gov/catalog-api)
• [ ] Searching the Data Catalog (eg https://open.fda.gov/api/reference/)
• [ ] Accessing Individual Datasets
• [ ] JSON schema/link to the Project Open Data schema

See also this roundup of Gov't API documentation best practices.

Should anything else be included?

[tomkralidis]

:+1: on adding the CSW to the dev docs, and adding http://pycsw.org to the list of the technology stack.