checking out Dataverse · community

Thought I would drop in to say 'hi' and to be able to say "I posted a message on "Zulip" once in my life. Did you!?" JK. I've been searching for open-source / self-hostable data publishing platforms all week and just got around to checking out Dataverse and reviewing the installation guide. Sounds feasible. One question if I may: is there a visual backend / GUI of any kind (and screenshots of that) or is all the data ingress script-based? The project I'm working on for what it's worth: gathering together open-source data about impact investing and sustainable finance with the idea of helping it gain visibility (the project is a personal initiative. I work for a non profit). https://github.com/danielrosehill/ImpactDatabase

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Apr 18 2024 at 19:36):

Hi @Daniel Rosehill and welcome. I hope you like Zulip AND Dataverse! :crazy:

I moved your post to its own topic. I hope you don't mind.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Apr 18 2024 at 19:36):

Are you asking if Dataverse has a GUI? Yes, it does, and you're welcome to play with it at https://demo.dataverse.org

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Apr 18 2024 at 19:38):

That said, you can script it as well. Lots of APIs (345 at last count) and client libraries in Python, R, etc.

Daniel Rosehill (Apr 18 2024 at 19:45):

@Philip Durbin Of course. Thank you. Always better to keep discussions separated. Yes ... my brain is a bit addled. That's exactly what I intended. The backend is ... what I'm looking at here, right? And one quick question: is there a way to disable account creation (as in via a self-service mechanism)? By which I mean: the data publishing platform I'm looking at building isn't collaborative in the sense that (for boring compliance reasons but mostly to make sure somebody doesn't upload data that would be problematic to host), I would be the only admin. Is that a "posture" that can be configured? Looks like a great tool!

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Philip Durbin 🚀 (Apr 18 2024 at 19:46):

Sure, that's actually the default posture. No one can add anything except the initial superuser.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Apr 18 2024 at 19:48):

If you want to let others create collections or datasets, you have to give them (or all authenticated users) permission: https://guides.dataverse.org/en/6.2/installation/config.html#root-dataverse-collection-permissions

Daniel Rosehill (Apr 18 2024 at 19:48):

Excellent. I got a hearty chuckle out of the description of the installation process as an "adventure" in the documentation. That's exactly what they tend to be. Or nightmares. But I appreciated the colorful perspective!