Loads CSV (and similar) data into CKAN's DataStore. Designed as a replacement for DataPusher because it offers ten times the speed and more robustness (hence the name, derived from "Express Loader")
OpenGov Inc. has sponsored this development, with the aim of benefitting open data infrastructure worldwide.
- Key differences from DataPusher
- Requirements
- Installation
- Config settings
- Developer installation
- Upgrading from DataPusher
- Command-line interface
- Troubleshooting
- Running the Tests
- Releasing a New Version of XLoader
DataPusher - parses CSV rows, converts to detected column types, converts the data to a JSON string, calls datastore_create for each batch of rows, which reformats the data into an INSERT statement string, which is passed to PostgreSQL.
XLoader - pipes the CSV file directly into PostgreSQL using COPY.
In tests, XLoader is over ten times faster than DataPusher.
DataPusher - one cause of failure was when casting cells to a guessed type. The type of a column was decided by looking at the values of only the first few rows. So if a column is mainly numeric or dates, but a string (like "N/A") comes later on, then this will cause the load to error at that point, leaving it half-loaded into DataStore.
XLoader - loads all the cells as text, before allowing the admin to convert columns to the types they want (using the Data Dictionary feature). In future it could do automatic detection and conversion.
DataPusher - job queue is done by ckan-service-provider which is bespoke, complicated and stores jobs in its own database (sqlite by default).
XLoader - job queue is done by RQ, which is simpler, is backed by Redis, allows access to the CKAN model and is CKAN's default queue technology. You can also debug jobs easily using pdb. Job results are stored in Sqlite by default, and for production simply specify CKAN's database in the config and it's held there - easy.
(The other obvious candidate is Celery, but we don't need its heavyweight architecture and its jobs are not debuggable with pdb.)
DataPusher - has the complication that the queue jobs are done by a separate (Flask) web app, apart from CKAN. This was the design because the job requires intensive processing to convert every line of the data into JSON. However it means more complicated code as info needs to be passed between the services in http requests, more for the user to set-up and manage - another app config, another apache config, separate log files.
XLoader - the job runs in a worker process, in the same app as CKAN, so can access the CKAN config, db and logging directly and avoids many HTTP calls. This simplification makes sense because the xloader job doesn't need to do much processing - mainly it is streaming the CSV file from disk into PostgreSQL.
It is still entirely possible to run the XLoader worker on a separate server, if that is desired. The worker needs the following:
- A copy of CKAN installed in the same Python virtualenv (but not running).
- A copy of the CKAN config file.
- Access to the Redis instance that the running CKAN app uses to store jobs.
- Access to the database.
You can then run it via ckan jobs worker as below.
Note: With XLoader, all columns are stored in DataStore's database as
'text' type (whereas DataPusher did some rudimentary type guessing -
see 'Robustness' above). However once a resource is xloaded, an admin
can use the resource's Data Dictionary tab to change these types to
numeric or datestamp and re-load the file. When migrating from
DataPusher to XLoader you can preserve the types of existing resources
by using the migrate_types command.
There is scope to add functionality for automatically guessing column type -offers to contribute this are welcomed.
Compatibility with core CKAN versions:
| CKAN version | Compatibility |
|---|---|
| 2.7 | no longer supported (last supported version: 0.12.2) |
| 2.8 | no longer supported (last supported version: 0.12.2) |
| 2.9 | no longer supported (last supported version: 1.2.x) |
| 2.10 | yes |
| 2.11 | yes |
To install XLoader:
-
Activate your CKAN virtual environment, for example:
. /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate -
Install the ckanext-xloader Python package into your virtual environment:
pip install ckanext-xloader -
Install dependencies:
pip install -r https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ckan/ckanext-xloader/master/requirements.txt pip install -U requests[security] -
Add
xloaderto theckan.pluginssetting in your CKAN config file (by default the config file is located at/etc/ckan/default/production.ini).You should also remove
datapusherif it is in the list, to avoid them both trying to load resources into the DataStore.Ensure
datastoreis also listed, to enable CKAN DataStore. -
Starting CKAN 2.10 you will need to set an API Token to be able to execute jobs against the server:
ckanext.xloader.api_token = <your-CKAN-generated-API-Token> -
If it is a production server, you'll want to store jobs info in a more robust database than the default sqlite file. It can happily use the main CKAN postgres db by adding this line to the config, but with the same value as you have for
sqlalchemy.url:ckanext.xloader.jobs_db.uri = postgresql://ckan_default:pass@localhost/ckan_default(This step can be skipped when just developing or testing.)
-
Restart CKAN. For example if you've deployed CKAN with Apache on Ubuntu:
sudo service apache2 reload -
Run the worker:
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini jobs worker
Configuration:
This plugin supports the ckan.download_proxy setting,
to use a proxy server when downloading files. This setting is shared
with other plugins that download resource files, such as
ckanext-archiver. Eg:
ckan.download_proxy = <http://my-proxy:1234/>
You may also wish to configure the database to use your preferred date
input style on COPY. For example, to make
PostgreSQL
expect European (day-first) dates, you could add to postgresql.conf:
datestyle=ISO,DMY
All configurations below are defined in the config_declaration.yaml file.
Example:
postgresql://ckan_default:pass@localhost/ckan_default
Default value: sqlite:////tmp/xloader_jobs.db
The connection string for the jobs database used by XLoader. The default of an sqlite file is fine for development. For production use a Postgresql database.
Example:
ckanext.xloader.api_token = eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJh.eyJqdGkiOiJ0M2VNUFlQWFg0VU.8QgV8em4RA
Default value: none
Uses a specific API token for the xloader_submit action instead of the
apikey of the site_user. It's mandatory starting from CKAN 2.10. You can get one
running the command ckan user token add {USER_NAME} xloader -q
Example:
ckanext.xloader.formats = csv application/csv xls application/vnd.ms-excel
Default value: none
The formats that are accepted. If the value of the resource.format is anything else then it won't be 'xloadered' to DataStore (and will therefore only be available to users in the form of the original download/link). Case insensitive. Defaults are listed in utils.py.
Example:
ckanext.xloader.max_content_length = 100000
Default value: 1000000000
The maximum file size that XLoader will attempt to load.
Default value: False
By default, xloader will first try to add tabular data to the DataStore with a direct PostgreSQL COPY. This is relatively fast, but does not guess column types. If this fails, xloader falls back to a method more like DataPusher's behaviour. This has the advantage that the column types are guessed. However it is more error prone and far slower. To always skip the direct PostgreSQL COPY and use type guessing, set this option to True.
Default value: True
Use with ckanext.xloader.use_type_guessing to set strict true or false for type guessing. If set to False, the types will always fallback to string type.
Strict means that a type will not be guessed if parsing fails for a single cell in the column.
Example:
ckanext.xloader.max_type_guessing_length = 100000
Default value: 0
The maximum file size that will be passed to Tabulator if the use_type_guessing flag is enabled. Larger files will use COPY even if the flag is set. Defaults to 1/10 of the maximum content length.
Default value: False
Whether ambiguous dates should be parsed day first. Defaults to False. If set to True, dates like '01.02.2022' will be parsed as day = 01, month = 02. NB: isoformat dates like '2022-01-02' will be parsed as YYYY-MM-DD, and this option will not override that. See dateutil docs for more details.
Default value: False
Whether ambiguous dates should be parsed year first. Defaults to False. If set to True, dates like '01.02.03' will be parsed as year = 2001, month = 02, day = 03. See dateutil docs for more details.
Example:
ckanext.xloader.job_timeout = 3600
Default value: 3600
The maximum time for the loading of a resource before it is aborted. Give an amount in seconds. Default is 60 minutes
Default value: False
Ignore the file hash when submitting to the DataStore, if set to True resources are always submitted (if their format matches), if set to False (default), resources are only submitted if their hash has changed.
Example:
ckanext.xloader.max_excerpt_lines = 100
Default value: 0
When loading a file that is bigger than max_content_length, xloader can
still try and load some of the file, which is useful to display a
preview. Set this option to the desired number of lines/rows that it
loads in this case.
If the file-type is supported (CSV, TSV) an excerpt with the number of
max_excerpt_lines lines will be submitted while the max_content_length
is not exceeded.
If set to 0 (default) files that exceed the max_content_length will
not be loaded into the datastore.
Example:
ckanext.xloader.ssl_verify = True
Default value: True
Requests verifies SSL certificates for HTTPS requests. Setting verify to False should only be enabled during local development or testing. Default to True.
Example:
ckanext.xloader.clean_datastore_tables = True
Default value: False
Enqueue jobs to remove Datastore tables from Resources that have a format that is not in ckanext.xloader.formats after a Resource is updated.
Default value: True
Controls whether or not the status badges display in the front end.
Example:
ckanext.xloader.debug_badges = True
Default value: False
Controls whether or not the status badges display all of the statuses. By default, the badges will display "pending", "running", and "error". With debug_badges enabled, they will also display "complete", "active", "inactive", and "unknown".
Supports: ckanext-validation
Example:
ckanext.xloader.validation.requires_successful_report = True
Default value: False
Controls whether or not a resource requires a successful validation report from the ckanext-validation plugin in order to be XLoadered.
Supports: ckanext-validation
Example:
ckanext.xloader.validation.enforce_schema = False
Default value: True
Controls whether or not a resource requires a Validation Schema to be present from the ckanext-validation plugin to be XLoadered.
This plugin adds the Strip Extra Leading and Trailing White Space field to Data Dictionary fields. This controls whether or not to trim whitespace from data values prior to inserting into the database. Default for each field is True (it will trim whitespace).
To install XLoader for development, activate your CKAN virtualenv and in the directory up from your local ckan repo:
git clone https://github.com/ckan/ckanext-xloader.git
cd ckanext-xloader
pip install -e .
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -r dev-requirements.txt
To upgrade from DataPusher to XLoader:
-
Install XLoader as above, including running the xloader worker.
-
(Optional) For existing datasets that have been datapushed to datastore, freeze the column types (in the data dictionaries), so that XLoader doesn't change them back to string on next xload:
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini migrate_types -
If you've not already, change the enabled plugin in your config - on the
ckan.pluginsline replacedatapusherwithxloader. -
(Optional) If you wish, you can disable the direct loading and continue to just use tabulator - for more about this see the docs on config option:
ckanext.xloader.use_type_guessing -
Stop the datapusher worker:
sudo a2dissite datapusher -
Restart CKAN:
sudo service apache2 reload sudo service nginx reload
You can submit single or multiple resources to be xloaded using the command-line interface.
e.g. :
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini xloader submit <dataset-name>
For debugging you can try xloading it synchronously (which does the load
directly, rather than asking the worker to do it) with the -s option:
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini xloader submit <dataset-name> -s
See the status of jobs:
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini xloader status
Submit all datasets' resources to the DataStore:
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini xloader submit all
Re-submit all the resources already in the DataStore (Ignores any resources that have not been stored in DataStore e.g. because they are not tabular):
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini xloader submit all-existing
Full list of XLoader CLI commands:
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini xloader --help
Main docs for managing jobs:
https://docs.ckan.org/en/latest/maintaining/background-tasks.html#managing-background-jobs
Main docs for running and managing workers are here:
https://docs.ckan.org/en/latest/maintaining/background-tasks.html#running-background-jobs
Useful commands:
Clear (delete) all outstanding jobs:
ckan -c /etc/ckan/default/ckan.ini jobs clear [QUEUES]
If having trouble with the worker process, restarting it can help:
sudo supervisorctl restart ckan-worker:*
KeyError: "Action 'datastore_search' not found"
You need to enable the [datastore]{.title-ref} plugin in your CKAN config. See 'Installation' section above to do this and restart the worker.
ProgrammingError: (ProgrammingError) relation "_table_metadata" does not exist
Your DataStore permissions have not been set-up - see: https://docs.ckan.org/en/latest/maintaining/datastore.html#set-permissions
The first time, your test datastore database needs the trigger applied:
sudo -u postgres psql datastore_test -f full_text_function.sql
To run the tests, do:
pytest ckan-ini=test.ini ckanext/xloader/tests
XLoader is available on PyPI as https://pypi.org/project/ckanext-xloader.
To publish a new version to PyPI follow these steps:
-
Update the version number in the
setup.pyfile. See PEP 440 for how to choose version numbers. -
Update the CHANGELOG.
-
Make sure you have the latest version of necessary packages:
pip install --upgrade setuptools wheel twine -
Create source and binary distributions of the new version:
python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel && twine check dist/*Fix any errors you get.
-
Upload the source distribution to PyPI:
twine upload dist/* -
Commit any outstanding changes:
git commit -a git push -
Tag the new release of the project on GitHub with the version number from the
setup.pyfile. For example if the version number insetup.pyis 0.0.1 then do:git tag 0.0.1 git push --tags
