[OSM-talk] [tech/API] Accessing tags set by a user for traces

Tom Hughes tom at compton.nu
Thu Aug 28 17:08:16 BST 2008


Guilhem Bonnefille wrote:

> I'm working on Viking[1], a GPS desktop application with OSM related features.
> 
> In order to assist user when uploading its traces to OSM, I wish to
> contact OSM, retrieve the previously used tags, and propose these tags
> to the user for the new trace.
> 
> Is there such API actually?

No, and I don't think one would be practical. To start with we don't 
currently normalise the tags at all so there is lots of duplication in 
the tag table - the only way to get a list of tags is to select distinct 
on the tag column.

Scale wise we have about 250,000 tag records currently, and even if you 
remove the duplicates there are about 40,000 or so. I don't think people 
are going to want to download 40,000 tags even if we wanted to let them.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://www.compton.nu/




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