Open Data NI MCP Server

Open Data NI

Northern Ireland open data portal built on CKAN. No authentication required.

Data Model

• Dataset (Package) — A collection of related data resources with metadata (title, description, organisation, licence, tags).
• Resource — An individual file or API endpoint within a dataset (CSV, JSON, XLS, etc.).
• Organisation — The publishing body (e.g. NISRA, Department of Health, PSNI).

Key Endpoints

• package_search — Full-text search across datasets. Supports faceted filtering by organisation, tags, format.
• package_show — Full metadata for a single dataset by name or ID.
• resource_show — Metadata for a single resource by ID, including download URL.

Search Parameters

• q — Free-text query
• fq — Filter query (Solr syntax, e.g. organization:nisra)
• rows — Results per page (default 10)
• start — Offset for pagination
• sort — Sort order (e.g. metadata_modified desc)

Gotchas

• Dataset name is the URL-safe slug; title is the human-readable name.
• Resources have a datastore_active flag indicating whether the data is queryable via the DataStore API.
• Some resources are direct file downloads (CSV/XLS), not API endpoints.
• The notes field contains the full description (can include markdown).