Bug fix: Implementing checks on @percentage attributes

Standard Management Modifications, Additions, Improvements
#1

Linked to the proposal in the v2.03 upgrade to set boundary values where the IATI Standard refers to percentages, a pull request has been received by @VincentVW to restrict values used in percentage attributes to the set boundaries (0 - 100).

This change would apply to the following attributes:

  • iati-activities/iati-activity/recipient-country/@percentage
  • iati-activities/iati-activity/recipient-region/@percentage
  • iati-activities/iati-activity/sector/@percentage
  • iati-activities/iati-activity/capital-spend/@percentage
  • iati-activities/iati-activity/country-budget-items/budget-item/@percentage

The IATI Technical Team are considering this to be a bug fix, given that the definition for these attributes typically reads

Content must be a positive decimal number between 0 and 100, with no percentage sign.

Therefore, and unless an objection is received we plan to implement this pull request for version 2.02 of the Activity Standard after a one week notice period (expiring on Sunday 13 August 2017). Where appropriate, this will also be back-ported to prior versions.

#2

Just to follow up here: I raised the following (temporary) objection to this over on github:

I do love this update… But… I think it might be better to wait on this until the boundary values for percentages proposal is done and dusted.

That proposal acknowledges that the typical definition:

Content must be a positive decimal number between 0 and 100, with no percentage sign.

…suggests zero should be excluded since it isn’t a positive number. And @wendy points out that in at least some contexts, excluding zero might be preferable anyway. So adding this now seems like it might add more confusion, not less.