[Mageia-webteam] Proposal for maintainers database API

Tue Mar 8 09:48:15 CET 2011

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
+
+