[Mageia-webteam] Proposal for maintainers database API

[Michael Scherer]

Le mardi 08 mars 2011 à 03:53 +0100, nicolas vigier a écrit :
> Here is a proposal for an API that can be used on the maintainers
> database, with the list of URLs and what they should do :
> 
> ***
> An html page with the list of all packages, and their maintainer :
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages.html
> As we have many packages, the page will be long, so maybe we want to
> split the list by first letter of package name :
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages_a.html
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages_b.html
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages_c.html

Hi, 

Thee is other paging system in rails and similar framework, no need to
specify this ( and I also think this is not part of a API ).

> The list of all packages and their maintainers, in text format :
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages.txt
> With the output like this :
> package1:maintainerlogin1
> package2:maintainerlogin2
> package3:maintainerlogin3
> ...
> 
> ***
> An html page to show the maintainer of one package (with
> [packagename] replaced with the name of a package) :
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages/[packagename].html
> The same in text format :
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/packages/[packagename].txt
> With output like this (only one line):
> packagename:maintainerlogin
> If the package is unmaintained, it appears like this :
> packagename:nobody
> If the package does not exist, an empty file is returned.

I would rather say : 
packagename: 

Using a name with a special meaning is just a special case to be placed
everywhere.

> ***
> The list of maintainers (all maintainers who maintain at least one
> package) :
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/people.html
> 
> ***
> The list of packages maintained by someone (with [loginname] replaced by
> a login) :
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/people/[loginname].html
> And the same in text format :
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/people/[loginname].txt
> With the same format for output :
> package1:loginname
> package2:loginname
> package3:loginname
> ...
> If the login does not exist, an empty file is returned.

A REST API would give a 404, that's also something everybdy doing HTTP
should grasp and understand.


> ***
> The list of unmaintained packages :
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/people/nobody.html
> And the same in text format :
> http://maintdb.mageia.org/people/nobody.txt
> With this output :
> package1:nobody
> package2:nobody
> package3:nobody
> ...

I would use a different url for unmaintained packages rather than
nobody. Adding special case is not very clean, as said before.

> ***
> The URL to add a package, used by the buildsystem when a package is
> uploaded on the repository :
> https://maintdb.mageia.org/admin/setnewpackage
> Protected with basic http authentication (with a login/password that was
> set in maintdb or apache configuration).
> Accessed with a POST request and the following two arguments :
> package: [packagename]
> maintainer: [maintainername]
> If the package already exists in the database, it is not updated.
> 
> ***
> The same as the previous URL, but the package maintainer is updated when
> the package already exists in the database :
> https://maintdb.mageia.org/admin/setpackage

IMHO, it would be easier to have just 1 url :

/upload/$package/$login/ ( and either protect this at http level, or
using a key somewhere in the url )


> If we compare with the maintainers db website used at mandriva, their
> version also has :
>  - media name for each package, with pages to list packages from only
>    one media
>  - a search box to search for a package
>  - links to bugzilla for each package
> But I don't think we should store the media name in maintdb. 

That's indeed inflexible, if we want to have a package in more than one
media.

> maintdb should mainly be used in the following cases :
>  - by sophie, mageia-app-db and other package databases which want to show
>    maintainers of packages. They download the full list of packages and
>    maintainers every day (or hours) from the text file, to synchronize
>    with their database.

So then we should ask them what they would prefer. I knw for usre that
reusing the mandriva format, or the fedora format will ease the work on
sophie side.


-- 
Michael Scherer