Portaljs connect ckan

Skill jeremylongshore/claude-code-plugins-plus-skills/plugins/community/portaljs/skills/portaljs-connect-ckan

Wire a scaffolded PortalJS portal to a CKAN backend over its API. Generates a tiny server-side fetch client (no runtime dependency) and feeds the /search catalog and /@namespace/slug showcases from CKAN instead of datasets.json. Use when connecting an existing portal to a live CKAN instance instead of a static manifest.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add jeremylongshore/claude-code-plugins-plus-skills --skill portaljs-connect-ckan

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

3 things to look at

reads credentialsReads from 1 credential source: `DMS`.
runs commandsInstructs the agent to run 1 command, including `npx next build`.
fetches URLsInstructs the agent to fetch 1 URL, including https://github.com/datopian/portaljs/blob/main/.claude/commands/portaljs-connect-ckan.md.

What its file declares

Copied from the file, not written here

The file declares its own license as MIT. That is the author’s claim about this one file, and it is not the same thing as the license GitHub reports for the repository, which is listed with the other numbers below.

SKILL.md

5.9 KB, ~1.3k tokens by cl100k_base, as published. Nobody here has run it

PortalJS — Connect CKAN

Overview

Connect an existing portaljs-catalog portal to a live CKAN backend for the "decoupled / any backend" path. The portal stops reading the static datasets.json manifest (and files in /public/data/) and instead feeds its two data surfaces — the /search catalog and the /@namespace/slug showcases — straight from a CKAN instance's REST API (package_search / package_show) through a generated fetch client. Output is plain, editable Next.js code with no runtime dependency — never @portaljs/ckan, whose bundle wires React UI components to React 18 internals and crashes at import under the template's React 19. Pages fetch CKAN server-side in getStaticProps/getStaticPaths, so the catalog is pre-rendered at build time and the site can still be statically deployed. Run this right after portaljs-new-portal to swap a freshly scaffolded portal's sample data over to CKAN.

Prerequisites

A scaffolded PortalJS portal (see portaljs-new-portal) with package.json, pages/, datasets.json, pages/search.tsx, and pages/[owner]/[slug].tsx present.
A CKAN base URL that is publicly reachable, e.g. https://demo.dev.datopian.com.
Node 18+ and npm available in the portal directory (no new packages are installed).

Instructions

The canonical, full step-by-step workflow is .claude/commands/portaljs-connect-ckan.md — the single source of truth. Read and follow it when executing. Summary:

Gather input from $ARGUMENTS — CKAN base URL (required), org filter (optional), group filter (optional), portal directory (default .). If the URL is missing, interview the user; never dead-end with a missing-input error.
Validate the target directory is a portaljs-catalog portal; if not, suggest portaljs-new-portal instead of failing silently.
Verify the CKAN backend is reachable via package_search?rows=1, and validate each org filter via organization_show; on failure, explain and re-prompt rather than dead-ending.
Generate lib/ckan.ts — a self-contained server-side fetch client wrapping package_search and package_show, with DMS, ORG_FILTER, GROUP_FILTER, and MAX_DATASETS as editable constants.
Rewire pages/search.tsx to list datasets from package_search, linking each to /@namespace/slug via datasetHref; leave pages/index.tsx untouched.
Overwrite pages/[owner]/[slug].tsx to pre-render one page per dataset via getStaticPaths and fetch details with package_show, previewing tabular resources through the existing Table component.
Verify the build with npx next build; fix any error before reporting success.
Report what changed: client, catalog, showcase, filters, and static page count.

Output

Created: lib/ckan.ts (fetch wrapper client — no dependency added to package.json).
Modified: pages/search.tsx (catalog reads package_search); pages/[owner]/[slug].tsx (showcase reads package_show, overwritten to drop the datasets.json source).
Unchanged: pages/index.tsx (still the static search-first landing page).
Verified: npx next build succeeds and prints the static page count.
Result: /search and /@namespace/slug are served from the CKAN backend; the DMS env var can override the base URL at deploy time without editing code.

Error Handling

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Missing CKAN URL	User invoked the skill with no `$ARGUMENTS`	Ask for the base URL (and optional org/group filter); never error out.
`package_search` request fails or times out	URL isn't a reachable CKAN root	Tell the user, ask them to confirm the URL, and retry.
Org filter not found	`organization_show` returns `success: false`	List valid orgs from `organization_list` and ask which one was meant.
Catalog renders empty after connecting	Wrong org/group filter name in `lib/ckan.ts`	Clear or correct the filter constants and rebuild.
`next build` fails	Typo in substituted `CKAN_URL` or bad TypeScript edit	Print the log, fix the first error, and re-run before reporting success.
`<Table>` fails to load a resource	CKAN resource host blocks CORS	Note that the Download link still works; prefer datastore-backed resources.

Examples

Example 1 — Public CKAN demo, no filters

/portaljs-connect-ckan url=https://demo.dev.datopian.com

Example 2 — Restrict the catalog to one organization

/portaljs-connect-ckan url=https://demo.dev.datopian.com org=my-org

Example 3 — Filter by group and target a specific portal directory

/portaljs-connect-ckan url=https://data.example.gov group=education dir=./my-portal

Resources

Full workflow: .claude/commands/portaljs-connect-ckan.md
Client, filters, and troubleshooting reference: references/reference.md
Related skills: portaljs-new-portal, portaljs-add-dataset, portaljs-deploy
CKAN Action API documentation: https://docs.ckan.org/en/latest/api/

What ships with it: 1 file

3.0 KB alongside SKILL.md

references/

reference.md3.0 KB

Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most data backend skills give in ~1.3k tokens

Counted across 258 of the 277 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-09-06

Centralize error handling in one handlerin 38 of 258, across 20 files
Select only needed columns in queriesin 36 of 258, across 18 files
Check cache before querying the databasein 36 of 258, across 19 files
Wrap multi-step writes in transactionsin 36 of 258, across 18 files
Retry failed requests with exponential backoffin 36 of 258, across 18 files
Batch fetch related records to avoid N+1 queriesin 34 of 258, across 16 files
Use resource-based URLs for REST endpointsin 31 of 258, across 13 files
Separate business logic into a service layerin 29 of 258, across 17 files
Queue background jobs instead of blocking requestsin 29 of 258, across 14 files
Abstract data access behind repository interfacesin 25 of 258, across 13 files
Log structured JSON with request contextin 15 of 258, across 7 files
Use a shared store for rate limitingin 14 of 258, across 6 files

Said here and by no other author read

Gather CKAN URL, filters, and portal directory from arguments
Ask the user for missing inputs instead of erroring
Validate the target directory is a scaffolded portal
Verify the CKAN backend is reachable via package_search?rows=1
Validate each org filter via organization_show
Generate a self-contained server-side fetch client

Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once. Length counted with cl100k_base; the agent that loads this file may tokenize it differently.