title: Data Package Identifier
---
slug: data-package-identifier
---
version: 1.0-alpha
---
updated: 02 November 2014
---
created: 17 August 2014
---
abstract:

Data Package Identifiers are small JSON-oriented structure or strings which identify a Data Package (and, usually, its location).
---
body:

Data Package Identifiers are a simple way to identify a Data Package (and its
location) using a string or small JSON object.

It exists because of the consistent need across applications to identify a Data
Package. For example, in command line tools or libraries one will frequently
want to take a Data Package Identifier as an argument.

For example, [DataHub](http://datahub.io)'s `data-cli` tool has commands like:

```
# gdp is a Data Package identifier
data info gdp

# https://github.com/datasets/gold-prices is a Data Package identifier
data install https://github.com/datasets/gold-prices
```

## Identifier Object Structure

The object structure looks like:

```
{
  // URL to base of the Data Package
  // This URL should *always* have a trailing slash ('/')
  url: ...
  // URL to datapackage.json
  dataPackageJsonUrl: ...
  // name of the Data Package
  name: ...
  // version of the Data Package
  version: ...
  // if parsed from a Identifier String this is the original
  // specString
  original:
}
```

It can be parsed (and less importantly) serialized to a simple string. Spec
strings will be frequently used on e.g. the command line to identify a data
package.

## Identifier String

An Identifier String is a single string (rather than JSON object) that points to a Data Package.  An Identifier String can be, in decreasing order of explicitness:

* A URL that points directly to the `datapackage.json` (no resolution needed):

      http://mywebsite.com/mydatapackage/datapackage.json

* A URL that points directly to the Data Package (that is, the directory containing the `datapackage.json`):

      http://mywebsite.com/mydatapackage/

  resolves to:

      http://mywebsite.com/mydatapackage/datapackage.json

* A GitHub URL:

      http://github.com/datasets/gold-prices

  resolves to:

      https://raw.githubusercontent.com/datasets/gold-prices/master/datapackage.json

* The `name` of a dataset in the [Core Datasets registry](https://datahub.io/core):

      gold-prices

  resolves to:

      https://datahub.io/core/gold-prices/datapackage.json