[p2pu-dev] [p2pu-community] P2PU API user story

[Jessy Kate Schingler]

as a use case, i am planning to install
statusnet<http://status.net/open-source>(the open source twitter
clone) to explore a different interface for
easily creating massive distributed courses with low overhead. it would be
nice if that integrated with p2pu.org auth at a minimum. one idea is that
we could essentially use statusnet as the discussion component, and still
use p2pu study group to host the static content.

i was initially of the same mind as jos, feeling that there are many things
we still need to do to build out lernanta. and that perhaps working on the
API will spread dirk's limited time too thin? also, have people even been
using the read-only API yet?

on the other hand, creating an api lets our community branch out a little
more freely while still using core services of p2pu, thus perhaps keeping
certain people and projects more closely integrated, where they might
otherwise fork off on their own altogether.

one of things we have always discussed was the idea to offer an open ID,
where people could also host their open badge backpacks. maybe focusing on
exposing an auth component is a good piece of the API to focus on?

jessy


On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 7:01 AM, Dirk Uys <dirk at p2pu.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 12:00 PM, Jos Flores <josmasflores at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Dirk, that is exactly the chicken and egg problem we had in the first
>> attempt of an API; no one can come up with clear examples. There was
>> some discussion, some neat ideas such as widgets to embed certain info
>> in your own site, but nothing was really fleshed out. And nothing
>> really came up that cannot be done by scraping info from the site
>> (there's people already doing that!).
>>
>
> Cool, do you know what they are scraping and what they are using the data
> for? It would be interesting to hear!
>
> I do believe an API is important but I also have a feeling that it is
>> more important to us (APIs are just plain fun!) than it is for the
>> site right now.
>>
>
> We can improve on many things non API related in the site. We should keep
> their priority high and try to avoid a situation where we promise bluer
> skies and greener grass once we have built an API :)
>
> My bigger use case was a mobile app but I believe that making the site
>> responsive in mobile devices would be a better way of using resources.
>>
>
> Agreed, we don't want to maintain separate Android and IOS apps.
>
>
>> I hope this does not sound harsh but to get people to use your API you
>> have to give them a quality service underneath that API. I don't think
>> Lernanta is at that stage yet. Having solid core services such as
>> authentication, mail integration, threading, integration with third
>> party services (OBI type of services), content embedding, a pluggable
>> and extensible architecture, and so on, would make people want to
>> build on top of Lernanta.
>>
>
> We should identify the core services and focus on them so that we can
> deliver the quality you are talking about. I think part of this is that we
> need to know what to aim at.
>
>
>> Sorry it's not the answer that you wanted to hear but it's how I feel
>> about the topic right now :)
>>
>
> No problem, it's good to hear how other people feel!
>
>
> Cheers
> d
>
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-- 
Jessy
http://jessykate.com
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