Community Open Data Tables for YQL
What's YQL? select * from internet
The Yahoo! Query Language (YQL) platform enables developers to query, filter, and combine data across the web. YQL exposes a SQL-like syntax that is both familiar to developers and expressive enough for getting the right data. YQL supports three SQL-like verbs:
SELECT for fetching, combining, filtering and projecting data.DESC for describing the input fields for a table and other meta information.SHOW for getting a list of the tables/data sources supported by the language/platform.
The SELECT statement is the primary verb for YQL:
SELECT what FROM table WHERE filter
In addition, YQL also supports several post-query functions like sort and unique.
Open Data Tables are XML files that can be "plugged" into the Yahoo! Query Language open platform (YQL). These files describe how the YQL SQL-like language can be mapped onto any web service or source on internet. Once mapped, these data sources can be used by developers in many ways in YQL.
What are community open data tables?
While anyone can develop and share an open data table for YQL, we are encouraging the community of open data table developers to contribute their tables to the open data tables github project. This makes tables much easier to find and share, and try out in the YQL console.
Why isn't this site on github?
While github is a great source control site, it's not intended to serve content quickly. datatables.org keeps a copy of the github master tree and automatically creates a single "env" file. Environment files enable the YQL console and web service to load up many open data tables from a single URL.
How can I try a table in the console?
You can import all the current open data tables in the console. This uses the environment file hosted here. If you want a single one try the use verb. Read about that here.
How can I build my own tables?
A quick read of the YQL guide is a great starting point, in particular:
One the other easy way of working out how to do something is to look at someone else's open data table that wraps a data source similar to what you want to enable.