Programmatic Method to Update Open Data Portal Item Pages and Data Download Items?

RexRobichaux · ‎12-23-2020

Hello Hubbers,

We recently built and launched a new Hub and Open Data Portal site for our agency (https://geohub-vadeq.hub.arcgis.com/) and so far have really enjoyed both the user and administrative experience it's offered. We have encountered some strange behavior regarding the Open Data Portal and Data Downloads however. I have a case open with Esri Support Services who are assisting, but thought I'd post here to take another approach as well.

Our basic deployment / environment is:

Open Data Content is pointing to AGOL Feature Layers, that are created from on-premise ArcGIS Server 10.7.1 web services (actually all come from individual layers within this service: https://apps.deq.virginia.gov/arcgis/rest/services/public/EDMA/MapServer)
The underlying data source for the web service are a set of file geodatabases that are update nightly via python scripts (primarily truncate and join/appends from Oracle 12c enterprise geodatabases).

The weird behavior we have seen lately is:

1) The underlying file geodatabase data and REST service data is updated at night, and we don't see updates at the Open Data Downloads page, more than 8hrs after the underlying data has updated (one such example where we noticed this): https://geohub-vadeq.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/e00ca5e58a8b4c9e9c47e61348d2f040

I resolved this issue by manually updating the AGOL feature layer item tag, which seems to have caused Hub to search for item updates.
From speaking with Esri Support, it looks like you can also force Hub to look for updates on all content through the Content Library (upper right < Check for Content Updates)- which seems to send a harvest call to opendata.arcgis.com: https://opendata.arcgis.com/api/v3/jobs/site/53f0be9030ac4298814b66f4a8c7faa8/harvest
Would it be possible to script this harvest call using the python api and schedule this to run say 1-2 times daily, so that we know Hub / Open Data pages are always pretty much current with our REST data?

2) Even after the Open Data Page updated, the data downloads (shapefile) were still stale / outdated. I tried clearing local browser cache, incognito, etc., and nothing worked. This behavior was still seen 24hrs after the underlying data updated.

In speaking with Esri Support, we found that at the dataset level, you can go in and choose to manually "Recreate Download Files". However, we have ~55 layers that change either daily, weekly, or adhoc (and I'm a shop of 1) so I can't go in daily and manually run this update for all of our data.
It looks like when I choose to Recreate the Download Files, I get a "File creation failed" error but I have a feeling it maybe a false flag, and it's actually working...as only the Delete call is getting a 403 server error (screenshot).
Would it be possible to script this "Recreate Download Files" and run daily via the Python API to ensure our data downloads are fresh / current as well?

3) Even after we refreshed the Data Download Files, until I went in and cleared out my browser cache and cookies, I was pulling the outdated downloads. So there appears to be a client-side level of caching that is causing issues. Is there a workaround to prevent local browser caching of data downloads so that users aren't unexpectedly pulling outdated data unknowingly?

Sorry for the heap of questions...as a recap- it appears there are at least three levels of complexity/issue here:

Open Data Item Update caching / frequency
Open Data Download Updates caching / frequency
Client-side local browser caching.

Thanks for any help and information anyone can provide!

-Rex

RexRobichaux · ‎01-04-2021

Hello @Anonymous User and @ThomasHervey1 - I hope everyone had a great Holiday Season.

I wanted to take a moment to post a little update on something I noticed today that I'm sure is related to the behavior noted in the first post just in case it's helpful. I noticed today while reviewing a couple of our downloadable Data Hub layers, that the dataset metadata (last updated and record count...along with (I presume) the map) is out of date / synch with the underlying data both within the service REST endpoint, and even within the attribute table in the Hub Data Page. Below are a couple of examples. For both of these datasets, manually going into the item, and checking for updates (I also recreated the download files...because why not?) resolved the issue. However this gets back to the manual vs automated update problem. I'm guessing this will be addressed in the 2021 enhancement you noted but thought this was good to mention just in case.

Here, we can see that there was a record updated on 12/31/20, and the actual record count should be 2,159. The layer metadata is showing it was last updated 2 months ago (incorrect) and is missing at least the latest record (2,158 records). Again, this can be pretty misleading both to our internal editors / data users, and external consumers of our datasets.

The next example is also a little perplexing... In this example, there were several updates on 12/30/20 and the metadata shows a last update of 4 days ago...which is at least close- but the record count is seriously off- by almost 60. Again, a manual update seems to have refreshed things:

Thanks again for continuing to look into the Hub / Open Data update issues and any help you can provide!

PhilLarkin1 · ‎01-12-2021

@RexRobichaux
Thank you for your excellent post. I appreciate the level of detail you've used to describe this issue. I am experiencing everything you've mentioned and would also love to see API access.

This is maybe the 3rd or 4th major site change since 2018 that negatively impacts performance in one way or another. While I appreciate frequent updates to the Hub framework it gets frustrating to update maintenance scripts once a year. Stability on this platform would be a pleasant surprise. API documentation would go a long way to help users navigate framework updates. Keeping AGOL Items and the Open Data page in sync shouldn't be this difficult/prone to issues.

young_mossy · ‎03-10-2022

any movement here by the ESRI team?

AlisonMynsberge · ‎08-26-2022

Also hoping to learn if this is something that is resolved, and if so, if others have scripts that reliably update the downloadable files and sync metadata.