Data.gov.uk

Data.gov.uk (CKAN)

The UK's official open data portal powered by CKAN. Over 50,000 datasets from government bodies.

Data Model

• Package (dataset) — A collection of resources (files) with metadata: title, notes (description), organisation, licence, tags, and extras.
• Resource — An individual file or API endpoint within a dataset: URL, format (CSV, JSON, XLS, API, etc.), description.
• Organisation — The publishing body (e.g. 'department-for-education', 'nhs-england').
• Tag — Keyword labels applied to datasets for discovery.

Key Fields

• name — URL-safe slug of the dataset (e.g. 'superconnected-cities-broadband')
• title — Human-readable dataset title
• notes — Full description (may be markdown)
• organization.title — Publishing body name
• license_title — Licence type (usually UK Open Government Licence)
• resources[] — Array of downloadable files with url, format, name, description
• num_resources — Count of files/resources in the dataset
• metadata_modified — Last updated timestamp

Gotchas

• CKAN action API: Dataset, organization, and search operations use CKAN's standard action API surface (package_search, package_show, organization_list, and related actions).
• Search: package_search supports Solr query syntax. Use q for free text, fq for field queries.
• Organisation filter in search: Use fq=organization:slug (not filter_organisations).
• Rows/start: Use rows (page size) and start (offset) for pagination.
• ID or name: package_show accepts either the UUID id or the URL slug name.