Mueez Khan
Mueez Khan
Brief overview of ckanaction
Skim a brief introduction to the ckanaction Rust library crate I published which helps interact with the CKAN Actions v3 API.
Published: 2025-05-07
Last updated: 2025-12-15
work
rust
This post is based on a blog post I wrote for datHere's blog.
Background
ckanaction is a Rust library crate that can be used to build programs that interact with CKAN Action API v3 endpoints. This library allows developers using the Rust programming language to interact with a CKAN instance in a straightforward manner. This API wrapper can be useful for simplifying redundant code and building programs.Why ckanaction?
Theckanaction library abstracts away common code to call API endpoints and replaces it with builder functions. Consider the following two code snippets and how they differ. In both snippets we attempt to access the /api/3/action/package_list endpoint to list 5 datasets.
First, let's view the code without using the ckanaction crate:
Now let's try calling the endpoint with the ckanaction crate:
The ckanaction abstracts away extra crate dependencies, helper functions, and less convenient code into builder functions. Doing so allows simplification of code in order to focus on interacting with the CKAN instance's API instead of boilerplate code.
You may get started with the ckanaction crate by running cargo add ckanaction in your Rust project to add it as a dependency.
You may also find further examples and documentation about ckanaction on GitHub or view the web app at ckanaction.dathere.com.
Changelog
Updates made to this blog post over time.
- Updated initial link to use ckanaction.dathere.com instead of GitHub.
- Fixed apostrophe symbols throughout post.
Share your thoughts
Submit a comment about this post that may be shared.
Join the Newsletter
Receive updates during my career.
Featured Publications
Technical writing on work experiences, projects, and tools you may find useful.
Mapping open-pit mines in the US
Python
Polars
Folium
Leaflet
Marimo
New "Typing with Typst" course
Typst
Generating Plotly charts for water data
Python
Polars
Plotly
Data visualization
Gazetteers for Texas Water Data Hub
JavaScript
HTML/CSS
Python
Leaflet
Boerne Water Data Dashboard
Next.js
Rust
Data visualization
Data engineering
Polars
Plotly
commit-helper
Rust
Building a CKAN Release Timeline
Python
CKAN
TimelineJS v3
HTML
View more written content on my blog.