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django-dcat

django-dcat is a Django app that provides a model layer for DCAT 3.0 metadata and some command line tools to import data to it, to create vocabularies and more.

If you wanna see an example of what can be done checkout Catalogo Social, a data catalog implemented with django-dcat.

django-dcat was presented at the CSV Conf 2024 in talk about how to preserve and backup open data portals.

Quick start

  1. Install the package using pip:

    pip install django-dcat

  2. Add "dcat" to your INSTALLED_APPS setting like this:

    INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...,
    "dcat",
]

  3. Run python manage.py migrate to create the DCAT models in your database.

  4. Start the development server and visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/ to start adding data (you'll need the Admin app enabled).

  5. Run python manage.py --help to see the available commands.

CLI utilities

Migrating from CKAN

There are two commands that allows you to:

  1. Make a dump of data from a CKAN data portal (that has ckanext-datajson installed)
  2. Create a Catalog with its related entities (datasets, distributions, etc)
# Download the data.json file from the portal
$ wget -O data.json https://www.ckan-example.org/data.json

# Download all files from the portal (by default in a data/ folder)
$ python manage.py dump_from_datajson

# Import all data and files into a local catalog
$ python manage.py import_from_datajson

Controlled vocabularies for standardise metadata

There are two commands to import controlled vocabularies used in the EU Open Data Portal in order to standardise the metadata.

# Populate records for the MediaType model (CSV, PDF, etc)
$ python manage.py import_filetypes

# Populate records for Licences (MIT, Apache, etc)
$ python manage.py import_licences

The goal of these commands is to provide data publishers with pre-filled options for the metadata fields. This will improve data quality and avoid common problems like duplicated metadata values for typos or inconsistent data entry (like distributions with .csv, .CSV, CSV, etc)

DCAT Serialization

Every object contains methods to serialize it to different formats. This way it is easy to implement a feed URL for your catalog.

  • catalog.to_jsonld(): (WIP) exports the catalog to a JSONLD format. The implementation has been inspired by the FAO - Data in Emergencies feed.
  • catalog.to_turtle(): TODO
  • catalog.to_rdf(): TODO

Extending the model

django-dcat focuses on providing a model layer for DCAT metadata. However, if you require custom fields in your application, you can extend any model using a OneToOneField pattern (similar to what you use to extend Django's User model).

from django.db import models
from dcat.models import Distribution


class DistributionExtras(Distribution):
    distribution = models.OneToOneField(Distribution, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='extras')
    my_extra_field = models.CharField(max_length=255, blank=True, null=True)

And then you can call this fields from your code using the related name attribute:

from dcat.models import Distribution

distribution = Distribution.objects.get(pk=1)
print(distribution.extras.my_extra_field)

Note: Instead of calling it extras You can play with more semantic names for the related_name attribute like the name of your app.

Implementation notes

The Django models in this package are inspired by the diagram presented in DCAT profiles.

See the diagram: UML diagram illustrating the DCAT-AP specification

For more information on DCAT:

Publishing a new Version

The project uses twine to publish to PyPi:

  • Update the version in setup.cfg
  • Create a new release in Github.
  • Build the package: python -m build
  • Upload to PyPi twine upload dist/*