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Getting Started with Civic Application Development

Thom Robbins, Socrata

@trobbins

Leveraging the power of open data

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“Open data looks to make data that

belongs to the public broadly

accessible and usable by humans

and machines, free of any

constraints”

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WelcomeWhy open data?

The goal of open data is to take the valuable

resource out of government database silos, where

it sits idle and put it into the hands of the people

who can unlock it’s value

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What will we look at? Hacking the data

We will look at how you can

use a free and open API to tap

into this data for your

applications

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What does Socrata do?

We make it easy for

governments to share their

public data with application

developers

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What kind of data is out there?

Over 200+ governments (and

counting) of all types are

making their data available!

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How much data is there?

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Typical data types

Budget and spending

Police and crime

Transportation and geospatial

Heath & Public Safety

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What can you build?

http://open-data-apps.socrata.com/submit-app/

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Spotcrime.com

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Look at Cook

http://lookatcook.com/

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Yelp (San Francisco)

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The Socrata open data APIs

Data publisher

Consumer

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Step 1: Finding Data

• Information resource -

Dev.socrata.com/data

• Local site example

• Cambridge Open Data -

https://data.cambridgema.gov

/

• White House Open Data -

https://open.whitehouse.gov/

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Step 2: Getting the API endpoints

https://$domain/resource/$identifier.$ext

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Step 3: Simple filters

/resources/abcd-1234.json?source=ConEd

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Step 4: SoQL Queries

/resource/abcd-

1234.json?$where=kwh > 8000

More information available at: dev.socrata.com/docs/queries.html

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Advanced SoQl queries

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Step 5: Geo Queries

/resource/abcd-1234.json?

$where=within_circle(location, latitude, longitude,

distance(m))

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Step 6: Paging through data

/resource/abcd-1234.json?

$limit=50 & $offset=100

The default $limit is 1000 and $offset start at 0

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Step 7: Application Tokens

Register at http://dev.socrata.com/register

Include as

• X-App-Token: $token HTTP Header or….

• The $$app_token=$token parameter

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Check out the getting started guide

http://dev.socrata.com/consumers/examples/creating-an-application-with-asp-dotnet.html

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Need help?

The place for all your developer

needs:

http://dev.socrata.com

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Are you ready?

http://open-data-apps.socrata.com/submit-app/

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Thank You!

Find Us!

Socrata.com

Follow Us!

@Socrata

Friend Us!

facebook.com/socrata

Watch Us!

http://www.youtube.com/user/socratavideos