I have had an itch for quite a while to make available useful APIs in a practical and user-friendly manner (the best I can do with general design skills) for data that is available in PDFs, yes our government folks love this for sharing data …
An opportunity came when a colleague shared a file of administrative locations in Uganda, there was not a lot of detail, but hey we have got to start somewhere
My idea is a place where users can browse the data, download it in multiple formats, and also get access to API end-points to use it – with quick evolution based on needs from the field
Hence the site https://opendata.ssmusoke.dev
The tech stack is very simple:
- Laravel 12 running on PHP 8.4 with a MySQL backend deployed using Laravel Forge
- Spatie Query Builder package – provides the searching and filtering feature for the backend APIs
- Filament PHP for the backend admin dashboard and the frontend displays too – loving the multiple panel feature which allows me to build a resource once and then use in different ways
- My IDE of choice is PHPStorm, with the Laravel Idea plugin and I am using Jetbrains AI as my coding partner – a match made in heaven
The focus on the first version was shipping, so there are quite a bit of gaps in the data which I will be resolving as I get feedback (already received comments from a couple of users) who have seen it
What data would you like to see next on the site, the simpler, the better to get more data here. My plan is to eventually open-source it to provide a starting point for others to build their own
UPDATES:
12 April 2025
This exchange with Wes Kambale (https://x.com/weskambale/status/1911037609221972426) led to a quick addition of NCHE licensed institutions https://opendata.ssmusoke.dev/public/higher-education-institutions
13 April 2025
Added a Postman collection to ease testing out the API end-points at https://bit.ly/opendata-sandbox-ug and below is a QR code
