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sunlightpolicy / State-Open-Data-Census

Working towards a US State Open Data Census
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Figure out why datasets aren't listed #22

Closed waldoj closed 9 years ago

waldoj commented 9 years ago

The Datasets sheet has 5 datasets in it, and the General Config sheet has a dataset row with a value of the General Config sheet's "Share" URL. So that all seems fine. But the submission page looks like this:

datasets

Oddly, that's 7 blank options. Every one is <option value="" selected="true">. If there were 5 blank options, I'd understand, but 7?

waldoj commented 9 years ago

FWIW, it's not just the submission page. The home page also has 7 columns for datasets, all untitled.

blank

waldoj commented 9 years ago

I tried changing the layout of the Datasets sheet to match the format of the stand-alone spreadsheet that Open Knowledge recommends in the docs. That spreadsheet is different than the one that they link to in the project README, which has fewer columns, in a different order. That made no difference.

I also tried changing the dataset IDs from numbers to strings of text. That also made no difference.

waldoj commented 9 years ago

I'm pretty sure I've solved it, though I haven't tested this. The General Config sheet has 7 rows. I think that the datasets URL is pointing to itself, rather than to the Datasets worksheet (which is part of the same file). This is the format prescribed by the README, but I strongly suspect that breaking that worksheet off as its own spreadsheet will solve the problem. (Or, alternately, getting a unique URL for that worksheet, though I'm not sure if that's a thing in Google Sheets.)

waldoj commented 9 years ago

Well, I forked off that worksheet to its own spreadsheet, updated the datasets field to point at that new spreadsheet, and now there's just one blank dataset, instead of seven. It's debatable whether that constitutes an improvement.

waldoj commented 9 years ago

I tried reverting the changes I made to the Datasets sheet layout, but that didn't make any difference.

waldoj commented 9 years ago

I tried leaving the Category column of the Datasets spreadsheet blank, per the docs:

Fill out the sheet named “Datasets” in your config spreadsheet following the structure provided. You can ignore the Category column.

But now I have 34 blank datasets instead.

waldoj commented 9 years ago

Fixed! I switched from using the standard link to the CSV URL (under File -> Publish to the web...), and that got things working.