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Does the Socrata SODA API support getting a list of dates on which the dataset was modified?


Does the Socrata SODA API support a method to query out all the dates a dataset has been updated? Basically a changelog for the dataset that has an object for every modification/update to a dataset.

There is an existing question that asks for the last modified date (you can get it through the "/data.json API available on all Socrata-powered sites".

There is also a method to get the modified dates of individual rows using System Fields and the :update_at field. But this is incomplete, a data provider might update every row each time. This means there is no guarantee that we are really getting back a history of modifications, just the top layer of modification on each row.

I'm looking for the complete list of modification dates, at least. We are trying to get a sense of activity on datasets and we need to know how often they are being updated.


Solution

  • Unfortunately, Max, we don't offer what you're looking for. We've got the last time the dataset and metadata were modified, but not a changelog of every single time that there was a change.

    A surprisingly large number of datasets change very frequently, as often as every 5 minutes.