[OSM-dev] GSOC Project: "Make the website use the API"

[Andy Allan]

On 2 March 2018 at 04:43, Paul Norman <penorman at mac.com> wrote:
> I wrote a blog post on how to get started with the API projects:
> http://paulnorman.ca/blog/2018/02/make-the-website-use-the-api-gsoc-project/
>
> I recommend steps 2, 4, and 5 for anyone applying for a project which
> interacts with the API.

It would be remiss of me to point out that I don't think this project
is a good idea. Although I said similar things last year (
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2017-February/029702.html
) I'll say it again now.

The idea of having a single-page javascript app to replace the browse
pages is overcomplicating a problem that barely exists. We would then
have a browser asking the website for some javascript code, which then
runs and asks the website for some API request. The website will fetch
the data from the database, construct a response in XML, then the
javascript decodes that, and finally constructs some html for the user
to view. Much simpler, in my view, to have the browser make a request,
and the server to respond with the html required.

Now what would be useful is some refactoring of the code. Currently we
have app/controllers/browse_controller.rb#way which returns some html
representing a way, and also completely separate code at
app/controllers/way_controller.rb#read which returns some XML, also
representing the same way. I don't think we need different controllers
just to return responses in different formats. So I'd like to see the
browse pages refactored to use the same code as the XML api, but
that's quite different from what is being proposed in this GSoC
project.

Thanks,
Andy