Municipalities in Norway collect and store a lot of data, some of which is published and is openly available to anyone. Such data can be useful to decision makers employed in the public sector, as well as entrepreneurs and businesses who wish to gather data for analytics and to consider business opportunities. However, many datasets are of little utility when they don't cover most of the country.
Additionally, one of the biggest hurdles for municipalities wanting to release data is a lack of experience and resources. By facilitating easy information sharing between municipalities using experience articles, we can make it easier for municipalities to learn from early adopters, lowering the barrier for release of data.
By solving these two problems, our Open Data web application aims to act as an accelerator for the release of open data in Norway. Open datasets become more attractive to the public, and the cost of publishing internal data can be lowered. Everyone wins!
Our solution is a web application made with React and ASP .Net core, together with a MySQL database for storing metadata.
It is recommended to use docker, as it makes getting everything up super simple.
Download Docker:
- Windows: Docker Desktop
- You need virtualization enabled on your system
- You need 64-bit Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Educational
- Enable linux containers. You should be asked about this during setup.
- Enable beta features
- For more information about Windows requirements, see https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/install/
- Macos: Docker Dekstop
- Linux: Depends on distribution - look up what the Docker package is called in your package manager. Usually
docker.
You also need docker-compose. On Windows and Macos, this should be bundled with Docker Desktop. On linux, you have to find out what the package name is yourself. It is usually something like docker-compose
There are three different docker-compose configurations. Pick the one that works best for your needs
./container/development- A normal development setup. The backend and frontend will reload if code is changed in their respective code directories.- Warning: This container has poor performance on Windows and Macos, as Docker is ran in a Virtual machine for these operating systems.
./container/production- A production-ready docker image. Everything is built when the containers are set up, no code is hot-reloaded./container/volumemount-friendly- The backend is prebuilt, and only the source folder of the frontend is volume mounted- This is a better choice for Macos and Windows users if speed is an issue
- You need to rebuild the containers if you change dependencies in the frontend
- To build, use
docker-compose up --build
Run docker-compose up from inside the folder of your selected docker-compose setup, and the rest should happen automatically. Note that a docker-compose.yml file should be in the folder you are running this command. If it isn't, you are doing something wrong.
The web server serves at localhost:3000, and the backend serves at localhost:9000, for ease in testing with postman and similar tools. Note that the exact configuration regarding where the frontend is, what is serving at it, and what forwards what, depends on what docker-compose setup you are using. Consult the docker-compose.yml file of your choosing for more information on what is happening in your container.
Note that no matter what you are doing, the backend server is proxied such that you never have to mention the backend server by localhost:9000. Using the :9000 port to access the backend will not work in production. Anything going to /api will be automatically proxied to the backend server.
An API documentation tool called Swagger is available at /swagger/index.html. This is a full API documentation for the backend. You can also use it to send API requests.
A simple SQL administration tool called Adminer is reachable at localhost:3739 when using the development or volumemount-friendly docker-compose files. For username/password, see /container/*/docker-compose.yml
ctrl-C to stop the containers.
The development and volumemount-friendly setups are meant for local development. The provided docker-compose.yml file exposes adminer and both http servers. Other machines on the local network can access them.
Not supported, but if you copy what docker-compose.yml does you should be able to do it. Note that the react server is probably set up to proxy to mysql, which evaluates to the mysql container when evaluated inside the docker containers. Therefore, you would have to make some changes to code to make this work.