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SDMX REST API

SDMX is an ISO standard for the exchange of statistical data (mainly used between International Organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD).

What I try to demonstrate is the capacity of this API to integrate data from these organizations (well, the OECD only right now) easily into your own sites or apps.

A REST API for some of the OECD’s data exists, but is poorly if at all documented. For the World Statistics Day 2010, I wrote this proof-of-concept site, also with the goal to stimulate others to build on this, or get inspired by it. It’s clearly incomplete, take it as a challenge. ;)

There is one technical caveat which is that the REST API only returns XML. This means that we cannot retrieve it using only Javascript, but need a local proxy that will send the request for us. This is currently a very basic PHP page. For use elsewhere, you probably need to modify the __sdmx_proxy_host variable in the js/sdmx/core.js file.

There is a test site at http://sdmx.oecdco.de/. Be gentle!

Todo list

Some of the tasks that would be nice to tackle are:

  • only one request for reference page (currently, I think one per section is issued)
  • add list of known methods to reference page
  • add error handling
  • handle status values (breaks, missing, etc.)
  • start with playground: make this an interactive page which would allow you to cut and paste resulting HTML/Javascript for your own site/apps
  • add more tests
  • add options to certain public methods (insertSparkline, insertTable, for example) for colours, direction, etc.
  • …

Disclaimer

This is currently a personal project, and is neither supported nor endorsed by my employer (OECD). Don’t complain if something doesn’t work as expected, fork and fix it!