[aur-dev] [PATCH] Add newly submitted packages functionality with json interface

[Aaron Griffin]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 6:44 PM, elij <elij.mx at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu 08 Oct 2009 18:03 -0500, Aaron Griffin wrote:
>>> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 6:02 PM, elij <elij.mx at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 3:36 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >> Flickr actually has two APIs - a feed based one and a REST based
>>> >> "ajax" API. Both accept a format=foo parameter and json is allowed for
>>> >> both sets.
>>> >>
>>> >> * Is the AUR's rss feed generated per request? Or is it a static output file?
>>> >> * If it's generated, why not simply use the same "format=" thing here.
>>> >>
>>> >> Note that Flickr finds it totally acceptable and ideal to use feeds in
>>> >> addition to their API
>>> >
>>> > As I recall, the feed is generated, then saved to a static file. This
>>> > static file is then served up php script reads it to stdout if not
>>> > expired, until such time as it expires. Then it is generated again.
>>> >
>>> > It appears to work that way as an artifact of the php class/import
>>> > that is being used. There appears to be no option (without adding it
>>> > yourself) to either use an alternate cache mechanism (memcached) or to
>>> > return the feed in alternate formats (other than rss2.0).
>>> >
>>> > This is _mostly_ painting the shed though (or format war, tabs vs
>>> > spaces, etc). Yet, for some reason this just doesn't 'smell' right to
>>> > me though. I can be a bit conservative at times though.
>>> >
>>> > It just seems to me that, getting a list of the latest updates is ..
>>> > wait for ... what feeds are for.
>>>
>>> Yes, exactly... but a "feed" doesn't always have to be RSS :)
>>
>> We could change the API to XML and then use RSS.
>> But I'm not sure that we could represent all the data we'd like to when
>> it comes to the RSS. Maybe we could add a custom XML namespace into the
>> RSS feed. We'd need to declare one anyways for the API and to validate
>> everything. I don't know. I'm a big noob when it comes to these things.
>> ...
>
> Change the api to xml?
> Namespaces?
> wtf are you talking about?
>
> We have RSS in xml format. And we are talking about adding a json
> output format representing the same data.
> rss.php?fmt=json (json format)
> rss.php?fmt=rss2 (rss2.0 format)
> rss.php (default would be rss2.0)

Bikeshedding, but if the format isn't always RSS, it shouldn't be
called rss.php - perhaps feed.php