Dataverse: datasetVersion vs. latestVersion in JSON metadata response

[ross-spencer]

Thank you for contributing an issue to the Dataverse Project! If this is a bug report, please let us know when the issue occurs, which page it occurs on, to whom it occurs, and which version of Dataverse you're using. If this is a feature request, please let us know what you'd like to see and give us some context - what kind of user is the feature intended for, and what inspired the request? No matter the issue, screenshots are always welcome.

I am using the web interface and the API to explore this dataset here: https://demodv.scholarsportal.info/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.5072/FK2/6PPJ6Y

You'll see from the diff on this gist, that the differences between the two outputs are minimal. https://gist.github.com/ross-spencer/ffd54e2fc1893b44e44fcf7147d5e417/revisions#diff-12eb2b59d603b983287eb105cf667843

My question is: are they by design?

• datasetVersion appears in the web interface JSON, but it changes to latestVersion in the api download
• citation appears in the version downloaded from the web interface

I'm interested to find out. We'll be developing against the API result, so we'll rely on that output for now.

[pdurbin]

@ross-spencer you're right. It's find of weird that the output of these two API endpoints are slightly different:

• https://demodv.scholarsportal.info/api/datasets/export?exporter=dataverse_json&persistentId=doi:10.5072/FK2/6PPJ6Y (from clicking "Export" and then "JSON" from the UI)
• https://demodv.scholarsportal.info/api/datasets/:persistentId?persistentId=doi:10.5072/FK2/6PPJ6Y (from examples in the API Guide at http://guides.dataverse.org/en/4.8.6/api/native-api.html#datasets )

(Thanks for the gist that illustrates the difference.)

I didn't even know the citation is only in one version.

Since both versions are in the wild, deployed to production installations of Dataverse, I'd say that either is safe to use.

I'm working on a talk about Dataverse integrations, by the way, so please feel free to leave a comment at #4283 with any new integration that may not be on my radar. Thanks!

[ross-spencer]

No worries. Thanks @pdurbin! We'll be sure to check out and add to #4283 as well!

[pdurbin]

@ross-spencer has your question been answered? If so, please feel free to close this issue. Or is there anything else you need for this issue?

[ross-spencer]

@pdurbin I believe they have and thank you! (Sorry I didn't see your response before). If there's no plan to fix this, maybe we can add some form of wontfix label? Otherwise, all is good and I'll close this now.

[pdurbin]

@ross-spencer sure. Good idea. I just created an applied a "wontfix" label, using the naming and color conventions at https://github.com/IQSS/redmine2github/tree/master/scripts/label_updates#label-namecolor-table

Thanks for helping keep our issue tracker tidy!