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On clients and APIs
Dreamwidth's APIs are poorly documented (people basically have to work off docs for old versions of LJ's APIs). They're also missing key features, like comment handling for more than backups.
I've been told there have been "some internal conversations about deprecating the XML-RPC API -- keeping it for backwards compatability, but moving to a much more modern second-gen API", but that nobody has had both the time and the inclination to work on designing such a thing.
Well, this is me, volunteering. To that end, I'm looking for input on what exactly such a new API needs to provide, and whether there's a preferred underlying technology to build on (exempli gratia, stick with XML-RPC? Change to SOAP? Use JSON? RESTful or not? et cetera). What I'm getting at here is that I'm entirely happy to take point, as it were, and to make decisions (especially where there's little or no consensus and someone has to make the call), draw up specs, write docs, and so forth, but the result is highly unlikely to be a really useful API unless I get input from more sources than my own experience and looks at the code.
At this stage, therefore, I want everything you, the reader, have to say on the subject. Use cases especially.
Go.
I've been told there have been "some internal conversations about deprecating the XML-RPC API -- keeping it for backwards compatability, but moving to a much more modern second-gen API", but that nobody has had both the time and the inclination to work on designing such a thing.
Well, this is me, volunteering. To that end, I'm looking for input on what exactly such a new API needs to provide, and whether there's a preferred underlying technology to build on (exempli gratia, stick with XML-RPC? Change to SOAP? Use JSON? RESTful or not? et cetera). What I'm getting at here is that I'm entirely happy to take point, as it were, and to make decisions (especially where there's little or no consensus and someone has to make the call), draw up specs, write docs, and so forth, but the result is highly unlikely to be a really useful API unless I get input from more sources than my own experience and looks at the code.
At this stage, therefore, I want everything you, the reader, have to say on the subject. Use cases especially.
Go.
no subject
However. If YAAPI is done right, it would be entirely possible for someone to develop a third-party pseudo-news-server that acted as a Dreamwith gateway. If they were feeling particularly clever, they could make messages with a Supersedes header edit the appropriate entry or comment iff it belonged to the person sending the message.
Such a gateway would have to be either run as its own instance per-user or associate an OAuth token with an account on the gateway.
It would be a big project, but it would be a cool one.
Read/unread state can be done in the client if there is (for example) a call to return IDs of posts and comments newer than $TIME in $JOURNAL