ju66l3r Posted June 16, 2003 Share Posted June 16, 2003 I have a question that may alleviate some of everyone's problems with the new search page. Would it be possible to have a standard API/tools package to interface with your search that someone could re-engineer the old page? This might also take some stress and bandwidth off of your server since it would only be hit for the query and not the HTML/ASP service (I know that the query is the more intensive part, but any bit might help in cost and repair). Just a thought. Google's API is a nice tool to work with to incorporate Google queries and this might be something that would be a good model for you as well (i.e. licensing and such issues). Is this something you are thinking about or working on? Link to comment
Nothlit Posted June 16, 2003 Share Posted June 16, 2003 I think this is a good idea, however I'm not sure if it differs enough from the pocket queries that premium members can perform. In either case, I'm seriously considering going premium just because I want to support the site, and if an API is something that's possible to implement without too much hassle, I would love to see it. --- Grove City College Link to comment
+Team D.A.R.K. Posted June 16, 2003 Share Posted June 16, 2003 I, too, would love to see some type of API (or web service) to allow some level of ad-hoc requests. I don't know all the details of your layout so I can't say how easy any of this would be. Are you using SQL Server? How big is the current data? Maybe we could throw in for a near-line server with lots of indexing to handle our weirdo querries?!? Then update it at night or once a week or something. I'm asking because I'm also thinking about screen scraping some data out of some of this in order to create some odd querries locally. Link to comment
+ClayJar Posted June 16, 2003 Share Posted June 16, 2003 IIRC, Jeremy has indicated on several occasions that web services are one of the things that he would like to add to the site. It seems to be my understanding that this would be intended to allow premium members to use programs such as Watcher, et al, to do queries and such. (In other words, I believe the answer is yes to the thinking about and not yet to the working on.) [[[ ClayJar Networks ]]] Home of Watcher downloads, Official Geocaching Chat, and the Geocache Rating System Link to comment
ju66l3r Posted June 16, 2003 Author Share Posted June 16, 2003 Okay, so along these lines...how many people are running this shindig? Is it just Jeremy in a little 4x4 room with 4 big servers or is this a 7000 person megacorp with a division working under pseudonym? I have a hunch it's more choice A (but maybe 20 people) than choice B (which is cool that Jeremy's been up to the challenge so far) but there might also be room for some of the more technically-capable among us to help him out in terms of generating some of these "wish I had time to do" features for the site, such as the API, search-optimization, answering this board, etc... Link to comment
+Team D.A.R.K. Posted June 16, 2003 Share Posted June 16, 2003 Well, if it is just Jeremy he is doing pretty good for a one-man operation (even if he has some non-programming support, he's still doing good). Anyway, more to the point, do you think we should all post little mini-resumes with our hours of availablility, area of expertise, various sites for reference, etc to help out? Has Jeremy said anything in the past about not wanting programmatic help? etc, etc? Just wondering. Hahahaha - Just took a closer look at the GPX file. Didn't think it'd be just XML. Thanks Jeremy. [This message was edited by Dawn&Richard on June 16, 2003 at 07:00 PM.] [This message was edited by Dawn&Richard on June 16, 2003 at 07:04 PM.] Link to comment
+GrizzlyJohn Posted June 16, 2003 Share Posted June 16, 2003 I have offered on more than once to help. Writing web based .NET apps against big databases is what I do for a living. I even wrote a quick bit of script to set the focus to the user id box on the log in page. Nobody ever took me up on the offer of help and they never used the script or did anything to set focus on the user id text box. So I guess they don't want any help. Link to comment
iryshe Posted June 16, 2003 Share Posted June 16, 2003 Yes, I'm interested in creating an eventual API that can be used by applications to read and display geocaching data. No I don't have a timeline and it isn't an active project. In the meantine, like ClayJar and his cool GPX app, you are welcome to write applications that read and manipulate GPX files (which are XML, as Dawn&Richard noticed.) As for assistance, I'm not interested but I do appreciate the offer. Jeremy Irish Groundspeak - The Language of Location Link to comment
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