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When I create a custom view, a map, chart, graph or report, and save it, the definition of that view is stored somewhere on Socrata.

How is the definition stored? Is it a schema? How can I download the definition? How can I upload a modified version of the view back to Socrata?

My goal is two fold: I want to do version control of my views Many times I want to use the same map or view with different datasets.

The answer "Version control can be done with the abcd-wxyz Socrata unique identifier at the end of the URL is not very useful. I can not diff one version of the view with the next other than eye-balling it. I would like to be able to download the schema as a text file that I could then store in a git repository.

Once I have a local copy of the schema, I could then generate the same type of view by uploading it to a different data set. Perhaps a different dataset on the same open data portal. Perhaps the same type of dataset at a different open data portal.

It would also aid me when importing new datasets. If the dataset was incident or ticket type data I could then import a standard set of views. A map, bar charts of types, age or status.

I like the Socrata web UI. It is easy to use and fairly powerful. It would be nice to be able to also manage the view schemas the same way I manage code or in my case as a Linux systems administrator, operating system/application configurations.

Sorry for the long message but version control of views is an such an obvious requirement for a open data portal. I am surprised I can not find any information about it?

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I see our support team responded to your support request you posted to support.socrata.com. The gist of the answer, for others' benefit, is that this is not currently supported but we are passing this feedback and request on to our product and marketing teams.

If you are absolutely determined to do this, you can visit a chart such as https://data.cityofchicago.org/d/hrnt-vbxn and watch your web browsers' XHR requests. You will see one to /api/views/fourByFour.json which will include what you're looking for. This is not a supported feature though.

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  • more details like this please
    – albert
    Aug 29, 2015 at 1:46
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    The metadata reported by /api/views/4-4.json can give you some insight into how the view is configured, but unfortunately it won't help you recreate that same view on another dataset without intimate knowledge of how views work within Socrata. You're more likely to create a broken view than one that actually works properly, as they're dependent on details of that particular dataset's schema, like the column's numeric identifiers. Aug 30, 2015 at 15:15

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