+shacker Posted August 23, 2008 Share Posted August 23, 2008 geocaching.com doesn't, unfortunately, subscribe to the "URLs are architecture, and should be elegant / readable / meaningful" philosophy. Still, I'm wondering if they at least support some kind of shortcut URLs. For example, is there any way to link to a cache page from another site in a simplified / cleaner way, e.g.: http://geocaching.com/cache/GC15N63 If not, can that be a feature request please? Thanks, Scot Link to comment
Dinoprophet Posted August 23, 2008 Share Posted August 23, 2008 You can already get pretty close. It's just not the default URL: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?WP=GC15N63 Still not as elegant as you propose of course Link to comment
+shacker Posted August 23, 2008 Author Share Posted August 23, 2008 You can already get pretty close. It's just not the default URL: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?WP=GC15N63 Still not as elegant as you propose of course Bingo - thanks Dino! No not as elegant, but as long as the cache identifying string is present, I'll be able to use this for my ... special purpose Cheers, ./s Link to comment
+Prime Suspect Posted August 24, 2008 Share Posted August 24, 2008 Why do I get the feeling that someone is about to found out about the "throttle"? Link to comment
+Mopar Posted August 24, 2008 Share Posted August 24, 2008 I suspect Shacker's next post will be the one complaining he's getting nothing but blank html or his IP has been banned. Link to comment
+shacker Posted August 24, 2008 Author Share Posted August 24, 2008 I suspect Shacker's next post will be the one complaining he's getting nothing but blank html or his IP has been banned. Help! I'm getting nothing but blank HTML pages! My IP has been banned! Guys, think about it for a second. If I was building a scraper based on this technique, I'd already have to have a list of all of the GC numbers. And where would I have gotten those? From scraping the site. And if I had already scraped the site, I wouldn't need this technique, would I? Not wanting to sound snarky, but I don't appreciate being made out as a ne'er-do-well after asking a really simple and straightforward question. Yes, I'm building something. And yes, I think a lot of people are going to find it interesting and fun. No, I'm not scraping, and no, I'm not going to consume any server resources from this site. Just wanting to automate some of the links from my project back into geocaching.com - no big whoop. Maybe someday geocaching.com will have a cool open API and thus give rise to a cottage industry of 3rd party satellite sites - the same kind of openness that has made Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and all the other Web 2.0 success stories so successful. This is an amazing database, and the possibilties for external sites to interact with that data are wonderful to imagine. For now, geocaching.com is still stuck in a Web 1.0 world where everything is still assumed closed, and interoperability with the rest of the web is virtually impossible. I still can't get a basic RSS feed of my recent finds, for godsake! Geopher for the iPhone can't even automatically get cache coordinates based on current location, thanks to the geocaching.com terms of service. That's really sad. For now, when someone asks a simple question about how to do a tiny bit of semantic interoperation between this site and another, the assumption is that he's a bad guy, not a developer thinking of creative ways sites could work together. In 2008, interoperability between sites needs to be encouraged, not discouraged. Sad that geocaching.com's traditional closed-ness has created this kind of culture. There are many things I'd like to do with my project that I won't be able to do as a result. But I do plan to respect the geocaching.com terms of service, even if I don't agree with all of them. Link to comment
+shacker Posted August 24, 2008 Author Share Posted August 24, 2008 All of this has got my wheels spinning, and I've posted more thoughts on the lack of APIs and open-ness in general at geocaching.com here. Comments welcome. Link to comment
+The Leprechauns Posted August 24, 2008 Share Posted August 24, 2008 When I list a cache on Geocaching.com, I am letting that listing site, and only that listing site, host the information about my cache. My land manager permission may be predicated on telling them where the cache is listed, and guaranteeing to them that when the cache is archived, it's off the internet for good. My updates about safety issues appear instantly on Geocaching.com (like where a bow hunter surprised a seeker of one of my caches during a special deer thinning hunt in an area normally closed to hunting). On Geocaching.com I have control of my listing, provided that I follow the listing guidelines. Once my information is sucked onto some other wannabe data provider's site, it is out of date, susceptible to manipulation, and otherwise outside of my control. I appreciate the website guarding my cache data so carefully. Link to comment
+tozainamboku Posted August 27, 2008 Share Posted August 27, 2008 Who says Groundspeak doesn't listen? coord.info Link to comment
+TotemLake Posted August 27, 2008 Share Posted August 27, 2008 That's a very cool resource. Thanks for pointing it out. Link to comment
+shacker Posted August 27, 2008 Author Share Posted August 27, 2008 Who says Groundspeak doesn't listen? coord.info tozainamboku - That's *excellent* ! Many thanks for the link. It's odd though - since Groundspeak obviously has the capability to do this, why don't they just use elegant URLs native to the site, and handle the hair internal IDs invisibly. Mysterious, but great to know this exists. Link to comment
+shacker Posted August 27, 2008 Author Share Posted August 27, 2008 (edited) When I list a cache on Geocaching.com, I am letting that listing site, and only that listing site, host the information about my cache. My land manager permission may be predicated on telling them where the cache is listed, and guaranteeing to them that when the cache is archived, it's off the internet for good. My updates about safety issues appear instantly on Geocaching.com (like where a bow hunter surprised a seeker of one of my caches during a special deer thinning hunt in an area normally closed to hunting). On Geocaching.com I have control of my listing, provided that I follow the listing guidelines. Once my information is sucked onto some other wannabe data provider's site, it is out of date, susceptible to manipulation, and otherwise outside of my control. I appreciate the website guarding my cache data so carefully. @The Leprechauns - All good points, and yes there are issues with privacy, safety, and data duplication when you get into this stuff. But you have to deal with the issues on a case by case basis and solve them with appropriate barriers. For example, why shouldn't Geopher for iPhone be able to access coords (for a logged-in user) through an API? And why shouldn't I as a player be able to choose to share out an RSS feed of my recent finds? Each user could decide whether to allow syndication of their finds. Why shouldn't I be able to obtain a feed of recently published caches in my area? Coords wouldn't have to be in the feed - just summaries and links back to the site, where the coords are protected from non-players. All of these things are solvable - it just takes some thought and the will to participate. Edited August 27, 2008 by shacker Link to comment
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