Atom feeds: watch the data

A new feature in CKAN 1.7 lets you get updates from CKAN when datasets you are interested in are changed or created. Web feeds are used to keep up to date with stuff that changes frequently such blog posts, news or CKAN datasets. You may already read your favourite web feeds with a feed reader such as Google Reader, or feed-enabled browser like Firefox. You can also get e-mails of a feed, using a service like this.

Feeds from CKAN

CKAN feeds are essentially just a list of search results, ordered by modification date so that you see the most recent changes first. You can get a feed for a whole CKAN instance - for example, point your feed reader at this URL to see the feed of changes on the DataHub: http://thedatahub.org/feeds/dataset.atom [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="311"] Live feed of the DataHub shown in a feed reader[/caption]We also offer feeds for each group or tag: http://thedatahub.org/feeds/tag/lod.atom http://thedatahub.org/feeds/group/archaeology.atom Finally, users can subscribe to their own personalised search results, such as this feed of all datasets which mention Kenya or Tanzania anywhere in the record. The feed address uses the same parameters as the [search page][search]. [search]: http://thedatahub.org/dataset http://thedatahub.org/feeds/custom.atom?q=kenya+tanzania

For developers

The feeds CKAN generates are in Atom format, and as well as being read directly may be useful to developers, though they are much less flexible than the full API. It's also possible for a CKAN extension to, for example, add a button in the interface to get a feed of a particular page. For example, the International Aid Transparency Initiative uses a CKAN catalogue with feed buttons for search results and data publishers: http://iatiregistry.org/dataset?country=AO http://iatiregistry.org/publisher/ausaid The buttons are implemented in IATI's custom extension.