Skip to content

Developer Resources

Tá leagan Gaeilge den mhír seo ar fáil anseo.

3-Star Data on data.gov.ie

The Foundation Document for the development of the Public Service Open Data Strategy aims to create an environment where, by opening up Government data, new opportunities for research, innovation, transparency, engagement and greater efficiency are delivered and realised by public bodies, businesses, researchers and citizens. Therefore it is critical that high-quality datasets are published on data.gov.ie in an open, reusable way.

The Open Data Technical Framework provides guidance on the practical aspects of publishing Open Data, ensuring that publication of datasets on data.gov.ie is done in a consistent, persistent and truly open way. This includes specifying that:

  • Data and metadata published on data.gov.ie must be associated with the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) Licence, at a minimum.
  • Data published on data.gov.ie must be machine-readable and in an open format (3-star Open Data), e.g. CSV, JSON or XML.
  • Data published on data.gov.ie must be compliant with DCAT-AP, the international Open Data metadata standard.
  • Data published on data.gov.ie should use national and international data-standards where possible,
  • Data published on data.gov.ie should use Unique Resource Identifiers where possible.

The data.gov.ie API

Data.gov.ie is built using CKAN 2.9, which provides a powerful API that allows developers to retrieve datasets, groups or other CKAN objects and search for datasets. There is full documentation available for the CKAN API online.

Example API Calls

Get JSON-formatted lists of a site’s datasets or other CKAN objects:

data.gov.ie/api/3/action/package_list

data.gov.ie/api/3/action/tag_list

Get a full JSON representation of a dataset, resource or other object:

data.gov.ie/api/3/action/package_show?id=the-walled-towns-of-ireland

data.gov.ie/api/3/action/tag_show?id=marine

Search for packages or resources matching a query:

data.gov.ie/api/3/action/package_search?q=museum

data.gov.ie/api/3/action/resource_search?query=name:The%20Walled%20Towns%20of%20Ireland

Dataset Suggestions

Data.gov.ie is intended to provide easy access to datasets that are free to use, reuse, and redistribute. If you would like to suggest a new dataset to publish, or if you have any comments on how to improve developer access to existing datasets, please visit the Suggest a Dataset page.

Source code of data.gov.ie is now available!

The source code for the main data.gov.ie CKAN extension can be located here.

This is an extension to CKAN and Drupal that provides customisations specifically for the data.gov.ie project, based on work by the data.gov.uk project.

Related CKAN extensions that data.gov.ie use in addition are:

  • ckanext-archiver
  • ckanext-harvest
  • ckanext-spatial
  • ckanext-os
  • ckanext-qa

Access source code on Github