Command Line Interface¶
Most common CKAN administration tasks can be carried out from the command line
on the server that CKAN is installed on, using the paster
command.
If you have trouble running paster commands, see Troubleshooting Paster Commands below.
Note
Before running a CKAN paster
command, you have to activate your CKAN
virtualenv and change to the ckan
directory, for example:
. /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src/ckan
To run a paster command without activating the virtualenv first, you have to give the full path the paster script within the virtualenv, for example:
/usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/paster --plugin=ckan user list -c /etc/ckan/default/development.ini
To run a paster command without changing to the ckan directory first, add
the --plugin=ckan
option to the command. For example:
paster --plugin=ckan user list -c /etc/ckan/default/development.ini
In the example commands below, we assume you’re running the commands with your virtualenv activated and from your ckan directory.
The general form of a CKAN paster
command is:
paster command --config=/etc/ckan/default/development.ini
The --config
option tells CKAN where to find your config file, which it
reads for example to know which database it should use. As you’ll see in the
examples below, this option can be given as -c
for short.
command
should be replaced with the name of the CKAN command that you wish
to execute. Most commands have their own subcommands and options. For example,
to print out a list of all of your CKAN site’s users do:
paster user list -c /etc/ckan/default/development.ini
(Here user
is the name of the CKAN command you’re running, and list
is
a subcommand of user
.)
For a list of all available commands, simply run paster
on its own with no
command, or see Paster Commands Reference. In this case we don’t need the
-c
option, since we’re only asking CKAN to print out information about
commands, not to actually do anything with our CKAN site:
paster
Each command has its own help text, which tells you what subcommands and
options it has (if any). To print out a command’s help text, run the command
with the --help
option:
paster user --help
Troubleshooting Paster Commands¶
Virtualenv not activated, or not in ckan dir¶
Most errors with paster commands can be solved by remembering to activate your virtual environment and change to the ckan directory before running the command:
. /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src/ckan
Error messages such as the following are usually caused by forgetting to do this:
- Command ‘foo’ not known (where foo is the name of the command you tried to run)
- The program ‘paster’ is currently not installed
- Command not found: paster
- ImportError: No module named fanstatic (or other
ImportError
s)
Running paster commands provided by extensions¶
If you’re trying to run a CKAN command provided by an extension that you’ve installed and you’re getting an error like Command ‘foo’ not known even though you’ve activated your virtualenv and changed to the ckan directory, this is because you need to run the extension’s paster commands from the extension’s source directory not CKAN’s source directory. For example:
. /usr/lib/ckan/default/bin/activate cd /usr/lib/ckan/default/src/ckanext-spatial paster foo -c /etc/ckan/default/development.ini
This should not be necessary when using the pre-installed extensions that come with CKAN.
Alternatively, you can give the extension’s name using the --plugin
option,
for example
paster --plugin=ckanext-foo foo -c /etc/ckan/default/development.ini
Todo
Running a paster shell with paster --plugin=pylons shell -c ...
.
Useful for development?
Wrong config file path¶
- AssertionError: Config filename development.ini does not exist
- This means you forgot to give the
--config
or-c
option to tell CKAN where to find your config file. (CKAN looks for a config file nameddevelopment.ini
in your current working directory by default.) - ConfigParser.MissingSectionHeaderError: File contains no section headers
- This happens if the config file that you gave with the
-c
or--config
option is badly formatted, or if you gave the wrong filename. - IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: ‘...’
- This means you gave the wrong path to the
--config
or-c
option (you gave a path to a file that doesn’t exist).
Paster Commands Reference¶
The following paster commands are supported by CKAN:
celeryd | Control celery daemon. |
check-po-files | Check po files for common mistakes |
color | Create or remove a color scheme. |
create-test-data | Create test data in the database. |
dataset | Manage datasets. |
datastore | Perform commands to set up the datastore. |
db | Perform various tasks on the database. |
front-end-build | Creates and minifies css and JavaScript files |
less | Compile all root less documents into their CSS counterparts |
minify | Create minified versions of the given Javascript and CSS files. |
notify | Send out modification notifications. |
plugin-info | Provide info on installed plugins. |
profile | Code speed profiler |
ratings | Manage the ratings stored in the db |
rdf-export | Export active datasets as RDF. |
search-index | Creates a search index for all datasets |
sysadmin | Gives sysadmin rights to a named user. |
tracking | Update tracking statistics. |
trans | Translation helper functions |
user | Manage users. |
celeryd: Control celery daemon¶
Usage:
celeryd <run> - run the celery daemon
celeryd run concurrency - run the celery daemon with
argument 'concurrency'
celeryd view - view all tasks in the queue
celeryd clean - delete all tasks in the queue
color: Create or remove a color scheme¶
After running this command, you’ll need to regenerate the css files. See less: Compile all root less documents into their CSS counterparts for details.
Usage:
color - creates a random color scheme
color clear - clears any color scheme
color <'HEX'> - uses as base color eg '#ff00ff' must be quoted.
color <VALUE> - a float between 0.0 and 1.0 used as base hue
color <COLOR_NAME> - html color name used for base color eg lightblue
create-test-data: Create test data¶
As the name suggests, this command lets you load test data when first setting up CKAN. See Creating Test Data for details.
dataset: Manage datasets¶
Usage:
dataset DATASET_NAME|ID - shows dataset properties
dataset show DATASET_NAME|ID - shows dataset properties
dataset list - lists datasets
dataset delete [DATASET_NAME|ID] - changes dataset state to 'deleted'
dataset purge [DATASET_NAME|ID] - removes dataset from db entirely
datastore: Perform commands to set up the datastore¶
Make sure that the datastore URLs are set properly before you run these commands.
Usage:
datastore set-permissions SQL_SUPER_USER
Where:
SQL_SUPER_USER is the name of a postgres user with sufficient
permissions to create new tables, users, and grant
and revoke new permissions. Typically, this would
be the "postgres" user.
db: Manage databases¶
Lets you initialise, upgrade, and dump the CKAN database.
Initialization¶
Before you can run CKAN for the first time, you need to run db init
to
initialize your database:
paster db init -c /etc/ckan/default/production.ini
If you forget to do this you’ll see this error message in your web browser:
503 Service Unavailable: This site is currently off-line. Database is not initialised.
Cleaning¶
You can delete everything in the CKAN database, including the tables, to start from scratch:
Warning
This will delete all data from your CKAN database!
paster db clean -c /etc/ckan/default/production.ini
After cleaning the db you must do a db init
or db load
before CKAN will
work again.
Dumping and Loading databases to/from a file¶
You can ‘dump’ (save) the exact state of the database to a file on disk and at a later point ‘load’ (restore) it again.
Tip
You can also dump the database from one CKAN instance, and then load it into another CKAN instance on the same or another machine. This will even work if the CKAN instance you dumped the database from is an older version of CKAN than the one you load it into, the database will be automatically upgraded during the load command. (But you cannot load a database from a newer version of CKAN into an older version of CKAN.)
To export a dump of your CKAN database:
paster db dump -c /etc/ckan/default/production.ini my_database_dump.sql
To load it in again, you first have to clean the database (this will delete all data in the database!) and then load the file:
paster db clean -c /etc/ckan/default/production.ini paster db load -c /etc/ckan/default/production.ini my_database_dump.sql
Exporting Datasets to JSON or CSV¶
You can export all of your CKAN site’s datasets from your database to a JSON file
using the db simple-dump-json
command:
paster db simple-dump-json -c /etc/ckan/default/production.ini my_datasets.json
To export the datasets in CSV format instead, use db simple-dump-csv
:
paster db simple-dump-csv -c /etc/ckan/default/production.ini my_datasets.csv
This is useful to create a simple public listing of the datasets, with no user information. Some simple additions to the Apache config can serve the dump files to users in a directory listing. To do this, add these lines to your virtual Apache config file (e.g. /etc/apache2/sites-available/ckan_default):
Alias /dump/ /home/okfn/var/srvc/ckan.net/dumps/
# Disable the mod_python handler for static files
<Location /dump>
SetHandler None
Options +Indexes
</Location>
Warning
Don’t serve an SQL dump of your database (created using the paster db
dump
command), as those contain private user information such as email
addresses and API keys.
Exporting User Accounts to CSV¶
You can export all of your CKAN site’s user accounts from your database to a CSV file
using the db user-dump-csv
command:
paster db user-dump-csv -c /etc/ckan/default/production.ini my_database_users.csv
minify: Create minified versions of the given Javascript and CSS files¶
Usage:
paster minify [--clean] PATH
For example:
paster minify ckan/public/base
paster minify ckan/public/base/css/*.css
paster minify ckan/public/base/css/red.css
If the –clean option is provided any minified files will be removed.
notify: Send out modification notifications¶
Usage:
notify replay - send out modification signals. In "replay" mode,
an update signal is sent for each dataset in the database.
plugin-info: Provide info on installed plugins¶
As the name suggests, this commands shows you the installed plugins, their description, and which interfaces they implement
profile: Code speed profiler¶
Provide a ckan url and it will make the request and record how long each function call took in a file that can be read by runsnakerun.
Usage:
profile URL
The result is saved in profile.data.search. To view the profile in runsnakerun:
runsnakerun ckan.data.search.profile
You may need to install the cProfile python module.
ratings: Manage dataset ratings¶
Manages the ratings stored in the database, and can be used to count ratings, remove all ratings, or remove only anonymous ratings.
For example, to remove anonymous ratings from the database:
paster --plugin=ckan ratings clean-anonymous --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini
rdf-export: Export datasets as RDF¶
This command dumps out all currently active datasets as RDF into the specified folder:
paster rdf-export /path/to/store/output
search-index: Rebuild search index¶
Rebuilds the search index. This is useful to prevent search indexes from getting out of sync with the main database.
For example:
paster --plugin=ckan search-index rebuild --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini
This default behaviour will clear the index and rebuild it with all datasets. If you want to rebuild it for only one dataset, you can provide a dataset name:
paster --plugin=ckan search-index rebuild test-dataset-name --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini
Alternatively, you can use the -o or –only-missing option to only reindex datasets which are not already indexed:
paster --plugin=ckan search-index rebuild -o --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini
If you don’t want to rebuild the whole index, but just refresh it, use the -r or –refresh option. This won’t clear the index before starting rebuilding it:
paster --plugin=ckan search-index rebuild -r --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini
There is also an option available which works like the refresh option but tries to use all processes on the computer to reindex faster:
paster --plugin=ckan search-index rebuild_fast --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini
There are other search related commands, mostly useful for debugging purposes:
search-index check - checks for datasets not indexed
search-index show DATASET_NAME - shows index of a dataset
search-index clear [DATASET_NAME] - clears the search index for the provided dataset or for the whole ckan instance
sysadmin: Give sysadmin rights¶
Gives sysadmin rights to a named user. This means the user can perform any action on any object.
For example, to make a user called ‘admin’ into a sysadmin:
paster --plugin=ckan sysadmin add admin --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini
tracking: Update tracking statistics¶
Usage:
tracking update [start_date] - update tracking stats
tracking export FILE [start_date] - export tracking stats to a csv file
trans: Translation helper functions¶
Usage:
trans js - generate the javascript translations
trans mangle - mangle the zh_TW translations for testing
user: Create and manage users¶
Lets you create, remove, list and manage users.
For example, to create a new user called ‘admin’:
paster --plugin=ckan user add admin --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini
To delete the ‘admin’ user:
paster --plugin=ckan user remove admin --config=/etc/ckan/std/std.ini