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Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 5 post(s) |
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CCP kieron
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Posted - 2007.05.16 16:51:00 -
[1]
This is the last installment from the current members of the Bloggers team. Over the next week a new team will be formed and will provide insight into current or future expansions, behind the scenes looks into operations at CCP and other interesting information. Have no fear, Oveur is not excluding himself from the list, he will still blog with his normal frequency and the outgoing members will continue to post blogs in the future.
So, what is going on with the MyEVE servers, what happened to EVEMon a couple weeks ago, what is this about data exports and what the heck is an API? To find the answers to these questions and many more, be sure to read his new blog, The EVE API Project.
kieron Community Manager, EVE Online |
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Riddick Valer
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Posted - 2007.05.16 16:55:00 -
[2]
What about making the client automatically generate an .xml summarizing char data whenever a skill is changed or you quit. This would create a local continually updated file that programs like evemon could access. Plus, since it updates whenever a skill is changed, it is always current (on that machine, at least). This information is already accessed by the client to display the character sheet, so it shouldn't be hard to make it output as a file.
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DarkZombie
Imminent Darkness Fluff Bites
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Posted - 2007.05.16 17:18:00 -
[3]
nice blog m8
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Chribba
Otherworld Enterprises Otherworld Empire
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Posted - 2007.05.16 17:27:00 -
[4]
nice, looking forward to the project launch!
Help me help you. |
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Xaen
Caldari H.Y.D.R.A. GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2007.05.16 18:03:00 -
[5]
When is the EVE client's UI going to get some love?
Support changing the UI here. |
Magunus
The Arrow Project Morsus Mihi
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Posted - 2007.05.16 18:19:00 -
[6]
OOOoooohhh.... Ahhhhhhhh.....
You realize you're just feeding my addiction to data, right? ---
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe' |
Two step
Amarr Chosen Path FATAL Alliance
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Posted - 2007.05.16 18:19:00 -
[7]
A few suggestions:
Release the schema for the rest of the EVE database and give us (the 3rd party eve developers) a place to submit SQL queries we would like to have exposed.
Data I would like to have: Average price for all items My buy/sell order status My build/research job status My hanger contents
Also, it would be nice to allow us to set up 3rd party caches for some of the data. For example, to relieve load on your servers, let some other site grab a detailed market dump once a day and make it available to others.
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Brad Stone
Caldari
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Posted - 2007.05.16 18:41:00 -
[8]
Originally by: Rid**** Valer What about making the client automatically generate an .xml summarizing char data whenever a skill is changed or you quit.
That's a fantastic idea, but we still need the api - many people like to use tools like EVEMon on machines other than their gaming rig at home (e.g. skill planning at at work whilst on that boring teleconference ;) ) we also get lots of requests for a PDA/PocketPC version of EVEMon - so the demand is definitely there for an "away from gaming machine" API _________________________________________________________ Senior EVEMon developer. Try EVEMon today! It's delicious!
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Raketefrau
Caldari Di-Tron Heavy Industries Sparta Alliance
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Posted - 2007.05.16 19:02:00 -
[9]
Edited by: Raketefrau on 16/05/2007 19:02:20 Would it be possible to add the amount of isk currently in your wallet to the smaller XML file that evemon is grabbing now?
It would only be one bit of data, and it would make life far easier, plus all those people who can only run evemon at work can dream all day about what they're gonna do with all that isk when they get home....
Oh, and couldn't you just use triggers on the game DB to update the web/api DB?
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Thaetan Brynn
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Posted - 2007.05.16 19:17:00 -
[10]
Edited by: Thaetan Brynn on 16/05/2007 19:17:16 Regarding the new API, it mentions wallet info. What I'd really like to know about this is whether or not we'll be able to fetch information about transactions as well. So for example, if I have the API credentials (characterID, username, and passhash) for two characters, would I be able to see any transactions between these two characters?
If so, this would allow me to set up just for example automation for things such as lotteries etc... where there character could submit their API credentials to a website/third party program/etc... after giving ISK to another character in game, and that website would immediately display the number of tickets that player bought, just as an example. It would be a way of prividing immediate feedback to the player in question, instead of there needing to be human interaction before they're able to get that feedback.
This is something I'm very interested in learning about, as I'd like to create some tools that would use this feature. Thanks in advance! =)
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Quutar
Caldari Auraxian Irregulars The Sundering
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Posted - 2007.05.16 19:23:00 -
[11]
I assume these APIs will be "read only"... for instance... the wallet read... using another URL, would I be able to send money from the character? Meh... if not, that would still be fine.
giving more information to the player, to let them slice and dice it as they need will be an awesome feature. The wallet exports, and asset exports will help with accounting.
For corp info... i remember in either a dev blog, or a post, somethgin about letting the CEO export the corporation "kill mails" through this interface? Is that still a go?
Not finding research slots in Empire Space? Try Quutar Research Services. |
Lord Matrix
PBA Corporation
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Posted - 2007.05.16 19:32:00 -
[12]
Since the datetime formats differ from nation to nation, are you going to use a proper format like unixtime?
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J'ahra
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Posted - 2007.05.16 19:33:00 -
[13]
Wow! Awesomness! I was just about to start on a new project in the form of a web site, so this is very good news.
Here are some friendly tips:
- Configure your webserver to respond to the ".xml" extension in the API directories. Seems much nicer to use "training.xml" instead of "training.xml.aspx".
- Have the API sorted in a friendly way (url_rewrite). E.g. "api/character/skills.xml", "api/character/hangarcontents.xml", "api/corporation/members.xml", etc.
- Use HTTP headers in the response to indicate how long to cache, perhaps also with a last edited date. This way a script could initiate a connection to the server and see that the page hasn't been changed at all in the cache time and stop downloading data right away. Your fetching script (you really should use a dispatcher to read the right data) could check a database timestamp or a file timestamp depending on how you store this data on the server.
- Be sure to provide us with valid XML, and perhaps even with a XML Schema or at least a DTD. It would be useful to be able to validate the data before you try to parse it, and then redownload it if something went wrong.
- Don't be afraid to export as much data as you can... The more resource intensive data (like market prices) could be under "api/daily/<file>.xml" and be generated/cached at TQ downtime. Market details for item 12345 could be under "api/daily/market/12345.xml"
- Be sure to make it machine readable instead of human readable. Timestamps as a UNIX-timestamp would be optimal for a machine but impossible to read for a user, yes, but it's easy to have a machine translate that between the data and the user. I mean: it is data; not a spreadsheet ;-)
- Please, please, please... Provide with order, transaction (not as important) and mail data. No, don't include the message bodies, just the subject, from and date fields. Good to have and mighty useful.
- Remember: If it is supposed to be machine readable, you could save much bandwich by just stripping all whitecase and similar. Just check in Google's HTML4 source code. Impossible to read for a human, yes, but uncountable GBs of transfer saved and faster parsing for the browser. Consider it if you are facing a flood of traffic.
- Another option to look into is respecting the Accept-Content HTTP header and wheck wheter the client accepts GZip-data. Modern browser engines (Gecko, KHTML, etc.) support compressed data and a script could gain it too fairly easy through all the open-source libraries out there. You could save as much as 90% bandwith usage by compressing the data before you send it, and many forums uses this method.
(Continued in a new post)
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J'ahra
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Posted - 2007.05.16 19:34:00 -
[14]
(Continuation from an earlier post)
Abuse protection with subscription keys If you are afraid of abuse, make every person wanting to use the API have a subscription key. This key could be a hash (several MD5, perhaps) with a length of 50 characters. It is both impossible to remember and to guess, and this way you can easily trace usage. For example, if I would create a script that fetches data too often, you could see my subscription key and tie that to my user. After that, you could contact me about it and finally ban my subscription key if I'm overusing it. Note that I don't mean that this key must be tied to an EVE Online subscription; it's an API subscription just to tie requests to different offenders. If I have one website fetching and perhaps a personal script, they would use different subscription keys.
Here's an example. I want to start a new project that needs the API. I go in to www.eve-online.com/api/subscribe and enter my EVE Online login data. Here I can see my subscription keys with the usage. With the press of a button, I get a new key (like "aa3487f67ac5652cee78ee752f443000000cef"). After this, every request from my new project will go to http://api.eve-online.com/api/<key>/character/15544000/orders.xml?passhash=123456789abcdef (15544000 is the character ID and "passhash" the password hash for that character) or perhaps http://api.eve-online.com/api/<key>/corporation/122330/members.xml?character=15544000&passhash=123456789abcdef (character entered must have proper roles; this could also be solved by a primary corp data password hash to be handed out to members wanting to fetch data)
This is an effective way of reducing load. People will surely use the subscription keys more responsibly if they know CCP can tie them to their accounts. Yes, people could get these keys, but they can get passwords, too... You can never protect yourself against any of that. Besides, the user will just cancel that key and create a new one if that would happen. It's not like they can be used to exploit anyone's account. :-)
Also, when creating new subscription keys, the user should be able to apply a label to it. There must be some way of distinguishing them when having them in an overview. Besides, it would be more helpful for you to see "Account <accname>, subscription 'Leecher'" instead of a key there in the logs or whatever.
Flood protection / denying subscriptions When a banned/nonexistant subscription key is being used, or perhaps when the server detects a huge load from the same IP, just deny access by returning HTTP 401 (Forbidden). It will be easier for script to understand what's happening then, and it would not load the server as much as returning a "error XML document".
I hope you take any of this into consideration. It's awesome that CCP is so open about the server to the players! Fully mind-blowing... Thanks!
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Salvis Tallan
Gallente The Shadow Order Hydra Alliance
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Posted - 2007.05.16 20:16:00 -
[15]
Wow, awsome! I know I am very very interested in the personal (and corporate) wallet exports. It will be nice to track expenditures, profit, and such. A few question I have though, will you be enabling certain parts of these APIs to testing, or will we need to wait untill they fully roll out before we can play? How will you be addressing feedback about what you are/could provide? ------
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Coutaux
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Posted - 2007.05.16 20:25:00 -
[16]
More data: good idea. I like it.
Wallet data: excellent idea! Especially if it contains transaction and journal history.
Are current market buy / sell orders going to be included?
Is it even a good idea to include market buy / sell orders through this interface?
My initial thought is No: it will lead to smaller price differences across the world which means it will be more difficult to make a reasonable profit from moving things around. This will effect the small time trader.
On the other hand, the economy will become more efficient as places that have need will more likely have the need met due to it being more visible.
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Chruker
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Posted - 2007.05.16 20:37:00 -
[17]
Originally by: Dev blog This gives us a side benefit of allowing people to provide their hash to third party sites, giving them a relatively secure way of letting a web site access the API on their behalf without the site getting their login credentials.
Have you been reading my mind? I was thinking of suggesting such a system :-)
Would it be possible to get advanced information on the API, so that web-developers can start working on content that utilizes it? So that it is ready with the Rev2 launch.
2007.05.16 22:35 > Chruker puts his tinfoil hat back on. ----- http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online ----- Top wishes: - No daily downtime - Faster training on sisi - Updated data export - Speedup IGB table rendering |
Salvis Tallan
Gallente The Shadow Order Hydra Alliance
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Posted - 2007.05.16 20:45:00 -
[18]
Originally by: Coutaux More data: good idea. I like it.
Wallet data: excellent idea! Especially if it contains transaction and journal history.
Are current market buy / sell orders going to be included?
Is it even a good idea to include market buy / sell orders through this interface?
My initial thought is No: it will lead to smaller price differences across the world which means it will be more difficult to make a reasonable profit from moving things around. This will effect the small time trader.
On the other hand, the economy will become more efficient as places that have need will more likely have the need met due to it being more visible.
I was just thinking that. As it is you go one jump out of jita into a different region and some items are 5 mil cheaper. This sort of trading and value shopping could be in danger if the market data becomes ubiquitous. ------
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Minmatar baby
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Posted - 2007.05.16 21:08:00 -
[19]
How about making one big official killboard also?... wouldent it be so hard to parse the mails that is already being made throught a website?
also can mails be improved so they can be bigger ? so all the information can be put into a kill mail?
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TornSoul
BIG Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate
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Posted - 2007.05.16 23:57:00 -
[20]
Edited by: TornSoul on 16/05/2007 23:58:00
/me smacks the "Most Exiting News in a Dev Blog for a very very long time" award on the blog
This is the blog/news I've been waiting for (well.. the results talked about in it, to be excact), for... 4.5 years... (no - I'm not kidding or exagerating)
Has truly got my EVE blood rolling/boiling!!!
And an API to the data to boot.
/me jumps and skips all over the place
Life is good.
Once implemented - BIG things will happen!!!
BIG Lottery [url |
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Aaron Static
Igneus Auctorita GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2007.05.17 00:48:00 -
[21]
Garthagk you........ are a god
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Mr M
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Posted - 2007.05.17 01:37:00 -
[22]
Originally by: CCP kieron The EVE API Project.
Oh yeah, I love it when you talk dirty to us.
EVEgeek | EVE Tribune |
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CCP Garthagk
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Posted - 2007.05.17 04:27:00 -
[23]
Yes, the wallet view will have transaction data. There will be another view that has only the current balance information, too, so you can refresh that fairly often.
Anyway, I am not going to make any promises about releasing information in advance. I agree that it'd be good, but I don't think I will have any beta versions of the site up, so it may make any effective testing difficult. But, I'll try to keep that in mind as I get things developed.
-------------- Garthagk - CCP Web Cell
To err is human to really ***** up takes admins. -Hellmar |
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Ionia
Advanced Manufacturing
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Posted - 2007.05.17 05:19:00 -
[24]
OH MY GOD!!!
I've been wanting and asking this forever, but it is a feature I truly thought I would NEVER see.
Get it done right and this will be fantastic.
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Ionia
Advanced Manufacturing
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Posted - 2007.05.17 05:28:00 -
[25]
I agree with some of the above posters, only allow the export of personal/corp information. Do not allow the export of things like region wide market data etc. The last thing we want is the people with software controlling the markets and cutting all the noobs out.
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CCP Garthagk
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Posted - 2007.05.17 06:01:00 -
[26]
For now there are no plans to provide market data with the API. Personal and corporate information is the primary focus, with a secondary goal of providing map data such as sovereignty.
-------------- Garthagk - CCP Web Cell
To err is human to really ***** up takes admins. -Hellmar |
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Keiko Kobayashi
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Posted - 2007.05.17 08:45:00 -
[27]
Great that youÆre going for a stateless approach now, but two remarks:
* Why not use HTTP (Basic) authentication for logging in.
* Why not use HTTP caching for æcached until YÆ.
HTTP provides all these things, and HTTP implementations can provide for these thing with built-in functions. Why force tools that use the API to implement custom authentication and caching?
I strongly suggest that this is used instead of the custom approach.
Finally, personally I would have liked to see RDF exports instead of XML, but I guess you canÆt have it all ^_^.
~Grauw "casual EVEMon contributor"
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FireFoxx80
Caldari E X O D U S Imperial Republic Of the North
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Posted - 2007.05.17 08:52:00 -
[28]
I think I soiled myself 3 or 4 times reading that. It's excellent news.
Is this going to be a one-way flow of information? Ie. You can get data out of Eve, but you'll never be able to use the API to change skills/transfer money/change corporate roles/etc.
I agree with people above really, any API needs to be machine readable and use standard data types. It looks like you are going down the REST route, rather than SOAP (I am sure some enterprising EvE player will write a SOAP wrapper for the API).
My only other 'wish list' items: - Demographic data - things like "pilots in space", "ships destroyed in last 24h", etc for each system. - Market data - I know at the moment it's a manual process, but automating it (even it it was a static feed every 24h) would be cool. - Once the idea of Killmails on character sheet is introduced; if we can get at these using the API.
What I do the rest of the time - Vote for a Jita bypass! |
D Gelalder
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Posted - 2007.05.17 09:23:00 -
[29]
Does the API have one main passhash or does it have the ability to create a passhash for a section of your information. For example, would it be possible to provide a login to the "my skills" section so a website can collect those for stats, without the 3rd party have access to anything else?
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Miranda Duvall
Gallente OPM Holdings
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Posted - 2007.05.17 10:10:00 -
[30]
I'm very excited about this, but i would like confirmation on a few specifics: - access to current market orders (not regional data, just the buy&sell orders i have out on the market). - access to hangar content (both personal hangars, Corp Hangars and POS structure hangars, maybe even POS fuel status) - access to personal and corp wallet balance (think this one was answered already)
I also agree with a previous poster about valid XML, compression etc.
Good times ahead!
My Skills -Invention HowTo |
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