Overview

Quick notes on adding a custom list of license to a CKAN build. Really I just wanted to add 1 license to the default CKAN list.

Notes

First I had to figure out where this was stored and how it was handled. In CKAN 2.7, which is what I’m currently using, the relavent information I found was:

  • A bullet in the User Guide telling people to contact the system admin if a new license is needed. This confirmed to me that it was possible.
  • Eventually led me to the Licenses Group URL Config that hinted at being able to point to a local file if desired.
  • Then wanting to know how this was implemented I searched the github repo to find the code ckan/ckan/model/license.py

After this I decided to copy the default ckan.json from Open Licenses Services into the main ckan src directory for now and save the response.

curl https://licenses.opendefinition.org/licenses/groups/ckan.json > ckan.json

Then modify the production.ini file to uncomment the licenses_group_url config option and changed the url to a path.

licenses_group_url = file:///home/ckanopen/ckan/lib/default/src/ckan/ckan.json

Then edit the new ckan.json file to add the new license. I used the UK Open Gov license object as a template to add my new license and saved the changes.

then restarted the server to see the changes.

sudo service apache2 restart

Then navigate to the Add Dataset or Edit Dataset pages to see the new option(s) in the license select dropdown.