Re: [GMG-Devel] API proposal

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Great!  Thanks for this work, Nathan.

Putting yours/Tryggi's goals aside and commenting directly on what you've 
written, I
have just one question in my somewhat sleepy state: do you anticipate
the API being mounted as a separate wsgi app, in the same app but at a
particular URL (like /api/), or run under all on the exact same URLs but
using the request headers to indicate that it's acessing it via the API?

Option #2 is probably easiest for now?  Curious what you think though.

Thanks,
 - Chris


Nathan Yergler <address@hidden> writes:

> So I've been thinking about this over the past few days, and today
> managed to get some thoughts down in the wiki.
>
> http://wiki.mediagoblin.org/REST_API
>
> My goals may be somewhat different than Tryggvi's; my intention is to
> create an API that allows non-browser clients to upload and retrieve
> media from GMG instances, leveraging straight-up HTTP as much as
> possible. The document is intentionally vague: I suspect that there
> are lots of things we don't know yet.
>
> I have thoughts about how to start development of this (and I think
> starting to build it will be a great test of how it works; if I'm
> 'right' it should feel easy :) ). But at this point I'd like to get
> some feedback. Does it pass the smell test? Does it meet basic use
> cases? Are there things that seem totally whacky to you?
>
> Thanks for your patience, looking forward to feedback.
>
> Nathan
>
> 2011/11/11 Tryggvi Björgvinsson <address@hidden>:
>> On 11/07/2011 12:04 AM, Tryggvi Björgvinsson wrote:
>>>
>>> As discussed at the IRC meeting yesterday I promised to write up an API to
>>> use as a springboard for nyergler to improve and work from. I wrote the
>>> proposal (for a very specific scenario) on the wiki:
>>>
>>> http://wiki.mediagoblin.org/API
>>>
>>> As you can see this is a really specific API which wasn't created with
>>> MediaGoblin in mind and only for submission of files but could be useful to
>>> launch the API discussion and work.
>>
>> After a discussion yesterday on #mediagoblin with paroneayea and Elrond, I
>> found out that MediaGoblin will start to process files immediately after
>> upload no matter what. This makes the claims/expiration idea useless so we
>> came up with a better approach to API which isn't as use case specific,
>> easier to implement and overall just cleaner. Instead of claiming files with
>> callback URL/webhooks. The callback is provided as an optional variable on
>> upload (when files are uploaded, the application uploading can send a URL
>> for GMG to POST to when processing is finished).
>>
>> I have modified the wiki page accordingly and split the API up into two
>> different APIs. One for submission, the other for Metadata. So we need to
>> provide the upload+webhook POST option and then implement the callback JSON
>> API.
>>
>> If the uploading application (the US) wants to add metadata to the file
>> (such as a Creative Commons license) that should be possible through a
>> different API.
>>
>> Hope this clears things up and avoids hurting in Nathan Yergler's brain when
>> he tries to understand what I am trying to explain.
>>
>> /Tryggvi
>>
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