Improvements to the IATI Datastore CSV Query Builder now live

Community Zone Using IATI Data
#1

The IATI Technical team have been working hard over the past couple weeks to improve the IATI Datastore CSV Query Builder. This tool was initially launched some years ago and is commonly used by analysts to return IATI data in a spreadsheet format.

Regular users will notice some significant changes to the look-and-feel of the tool:

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The changes have included:

  • Improved usability across a wider range of devices through porting the front-end to Bootstrap
  • Nicer select fields (including ability to multi-select fields) through the use of the Chosen jQuery plugin
  • Additional Datastore filters have been added, including activity start and end dates
  • Ability to preview (as well as download) data by linking the tool to the IATI Preview tool
  • Removed the need to click submit to obtain a Datastore query by generating the Datastore link instantly using javascript, where browser support exists
  • Adding clearer copy, alongside visual enhancements

The changes are now available to view at: http://datastore.iatistandard.org/query

We welcome comments, user feedback and ideas for additional improvements – either in response to this post, or by adding to our Github issue.

Special thanks also goes to @andylolz who has provided community support for this work, including a number of useful code contributions.

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#2

I just had a go - really great improvements - thanks!

Any chance of allowing users to chose alternative sector codelists?

Matt

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#3

Interesting suggestion, @matmaxgeds!

The datastore is (currently) only DAC 5-digit:
http://datastore.iatistandard.org/docs/api/#sector

So that’s not to say it’s by any means impossible… Just flagging that it would require changes to the datastore too.

But anyway! In (approximately) the spirit of the upgrade procedures document, are you able to expand a bit on the intent here? What are you trying to do / what alternative sector codelists are you looking to use?

Thanks!

#4

Hi @andylolz of course:

In this case, I was looking up some OCHA data and wanted the output broken down by clusters (the humanitarian sectors, vocab = 10). I was surprised to see that OCHA were actually reporting via both DAC5 sector codes, and their own vocab=99 so I was able to get the data (secondary issue, the sector names associated with this vocab=99 are visible in the xml, but not visible in the csv).

My request was more driven by the expectation that OCHA-FTS were not using the DAC5 sector codes (hence I initially tried to search using a different vocab, the feature that is not there), and therefore to find their data, I would have needed to be able to search by different sector vocabs.

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#5

http://datastore.iatistandard.org/api/1/access/activity.xml?sector=998 http://datastore.iatistandard.org/api/1/access/activity.xml?sector=4

Looks like the Datastore will query whatever is provided in the code attribute (though you can’t additionally filter for particular vocabularies).

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#6

Oh, good spot, @hayfield! (I read the documentation, but didn’t actually test it!) Returning matching sectors regardless of vocab is somewhere between an undocumented features and a bug…! E.g. I can imagine scenarios where it causes spurious results (e.g. a custom vocab happens to contain codes that look the same as DAC codes).

So… Feature request to add a sector vocab parameter to the datastore API :slight_smile:

P.S. Thanks for elucidating, @matmaxgeds! That’s very helpful.

#7

Thanks @andylolz and @hayfield - great to know that the ‘bug’ works and looking forward to the full feature!