[TBA]: API Client Development

[Greg Marra]

TBA currently offers an API client in PHP that can be found here.

I know Eric Haskins has written a .NET port that can be found here for now, and Team 1515 is writing a Rails port. I think myself or Chris Jelly will be working with these guys to make their ports available from the TBA site.

Has anyone else written a port of the Client Library? What issues have you had porting it?

[CapnKernel]

I just finished a Ruby (on Rails) client library.

Feel free to use it.
Have any questions, comments, bug fixes, complaints, or just want to talk to someone who knows Ruby, contact me via:

AIM/Skype: talk2kern
MSN/Email: talk2kern@gmail.com

[EHaskins]

I attached a copy of my .net client. Currently the only documentation is the code, but if there is any interest I can finish better documentation.

It requires .net 3.5, and Visual Basic 2008 Express or Visual Studio 2008 or greater.

Currently there are two projects, a class library with the client, and a console app which can be used to query the API. The readme file has instructions how to set your API key in the config file.

I have put the code under the Microsft Public License, so you are free to modify or redistribute it how ever you want.

If anyone has questions, comments, bug reports, ect., please contact me. My Skype, MSN, and e-mail, are in my profile, you can contact me using any of those methods.

[EHaskins]

I attached the compiled version of the code I posted above.

[Greg Marra]

I've updated the documentation and files available for download at: http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/api/

I'll write a pretty page to wrap around it at some point.

[EHaskins]

Here is v1.1 of my library.

There is only one bug fix.
1. When loading matches, some of the matches at the 2007 Florida regional are missing team numbers, and the parser would crash. That has been resolved.

[CapnKernel]

Also found a bug in my Ruby code when I actually used it in practice for my application.

This'll make the code more Ruby-like and return false if there are no results found but an error does not occur.

Happy coding!

[Greg Marra]

Both updated libraries have been added to http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/api/.

Thanks guys!

[EHaskins]

Would it be useful to create a SourceForge, CodePlex, GoogleCode, ect, site where we could mantain a record of any client libraries people develop?

Just a thought.

[Greg Marra]

I'm not sure we're at that level of complexity yet, but it is an idea worth keeping in mind if the number starts to get big or there is much need to change them.

[Greg McCoy]

This is very cool stuff...I'm using the TBA API now for the Boilermaker Regional website, and I hope to expand our usage once I have some time to explore all of the possibilities...

I'll try and pay it forward with a Python connector...I've only had my API key for 12 hours or so, so I haven't tested this extensively but it should work fairly well. If you notice any bugs or anything that could be improved, let me know!


Thanks!

[Nibbles]

Originally Posted by Greg Marra

TBA currently offers an API client in PHP that can be found here.

...

Has anyone else written a port of the Client Library? What issues have you had porting it?

I noticed other threads with people having problems. PHP5 has this great new thing called Exceptions. If there is an error, it will kill the execution of the script, unless the programmer has a method of catching and handling the exception.
The official PHP client is serverely lacking in error checking, for instance, if the API server returns a blank XML (XHTML, say) document, then no error will pop up.

I'll keep it simple, my edits are public domain. I have not tested this, but it should work.

function tba_send_request($method, $arguments=array()){
  $api_key = ""; //replace with your API key
  $api_url = "http://thebluealliance.net/tbatv/api.php"; //this should not change
  // prepend the default array elements
  $arguments = array('version'=>1, 'api_key'=>$api_key,'method'=>$method) + $arguments;
  $file = $api_url.'?'.http_build_query($arguments);
  $xml = simplexml_load_file($file);
  // check for a broken connection, bad XML, etc
  if($xml===false) throw new Exception("Bad XML returned getting file $file");
  // check for errors thrown by the server
  if (count($xml->error)){
    throw new Exception("Error generated by API server: ".(string)$xml->error->text, (int)$xml->error->code);
  }else{
    return $xml;
  }
}

While you could put these functions into a class, and have the API key be a property of the object, I would not recommend it (at least for PHP), there is no benefit to using object-oriented programming here (since the most objects you will ever need is one).

[EHaskins]

I've been experimenting with the API, and for compatibility reasons I've created a .net 2.0 port of my .net 3.5 client. I haven't done any performance comparisions, so don't ask about that.

The demo console app also has some small improvments, but nothing too major.

EDIT: Added license and readme to source file, and added compiled version.

[Nibbles]

Not to start a flame war, but no one cares about .net or Microsoft's open-source-wannabe-license. Public domain or a simple "Redistribute alike" clause offers more then enough protection.
<rant>Look at Kevin Watsons code, the entire license is three sentences, including "Thanks." And even if we did care about a bigo license, no one uses .net for anything anyways, since the number of platforms I can use it on I can count on one hand, no, one finger!</rant>

On a slightly related note, I was going to code up a test console in php-gtk, but there wasn't enough room to attach php5.dll</irony>

<edit>I remember why I came here: You are not having any problems with server load at all? It takes a measurable amount of time to ping the page for data, are we interested in caching the data at all? You are going to need to send HTTP caching headers first, which I do not see currently (i.e. HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified)</edit>

[EHaskins]

I don't normally reply to people when they post something totally unrelated to the current thread, but I thought I'd do you a favor and correct some of your bigger misconceptions.

Originally Posted by Nibbles

Not to start a flame war, but no one cares about .net or Microsoft's open-source-wannabe-license. Public domain or a simple "Redistribute alike" clause offers more then enough protection.

Its never a good idea to release code without an accompanying license, both for you and anyone who wants to use it. If I use someone's code which isn't licensed properly I could be leaving myself vulnerable, no matter how small that vulnerability is, its safer to attach a real license, any license, so everybody involved knows their rights and responsibilities.

MsPL just happened to be the first license I saw which had terms I agreed with.

Originally Posted by Nibbles

And even if we did care about a bigo license, no one uses .net for anything anyways

That is just not true. For business apps .net is more popular than Java(#2), there are millions of ASP.net web servers, and over 4000 open source projects are hosted on CodeProject.

Originally Posted by Nibbles

since the number of platforms I can use it on I can count on one hand, no, one finger!</rant>

Also false, unless you have some serious disfigument, in which case I applogize for the next paragraph. .net currently runs on Linux, Mac, XBox 360, Zune*, and of course Windows. Also some people count the web scenarios seperatly, which includes Windows(IIS or Apache), Linux(Apache), and I believe Mac.


On a side note, did you download my code just so you could complain, or are you a closet .net fan?
* Currently in beta.