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

[Jos Flores]

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!).

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.

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.

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.

Sorry it's not the answer that you wanted to hear but it's how I feel
about the topic right now :)

cheers,
José


On 11 June 2012 09:10, Dirk Uys <dirk at p2pu.org> wrote:
> Hi Jose
>
> I think I didn't manage to relate my intentions/expectations with the
> original email. The example of mooc.org is mostly fictional, used only to
> image how we would like to use an API in the future.
>
> On Sat, Jun 9, 2012 at 1:24 PM, Jos Flores <josmasflores at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> And to add to the previous message, a more fundamental question: Why
>> would anyone want to run SOGTA against the P2PU API instead of running
>> SOGTA on P2PU?
>
>
> I assume you are referring to mooc.org, SOGTA is simply a MOOC running on
> mooc.org in a make believe world :-)
>
> One reason may be that mooc.org is built using a different technology (RoR).
> Or maybe mooc.org wants to run quicker release cycles. Maybe mooc.org
> doesn't completely fit within p2pu.org? It may also be run as mooc.p2pu.org?
>
>> another questions/suggestions:
>>  - P2PU login could rely on available services; not sure what's the
>> state of OpenID, but at least Google, Twitter, Facebook, and BrowserID
>> would make life easier for new users, and for the API too.
>
>
> Agreed, what I described is actually very closely related to BrowserID. I
> think we should use existing technologies where it makes sense.
>
>>
>>  - I don't see the relation between email integration and the API?
>
>
> Email integration would be something that is handled by P2PU, the API simply
> needs to expose that in some way so that 3rd party apps can also use it.
> Sorry if that part of the story feels like salt in the wounds at this moment
> :-)
>
>>
>>  - How much functionality would SOGTA deliver itself and how much
>> functionality would depend on P2PU; for instance for forums, user
>> profiles, internal messaging... This ties to my first question; why
>> building on top of the API when you can have everything for free on
>> P2PU?
>
>
> Good question, maybe P2PU.org should provide components like Discuss or
> Facebook comments? Which raises the question, why don't we use an existing
> service?
>
>>
>> I can think of uses for the API but if you want to run a
>> course/group... that is Lernanta's strong suit, why use something
>> else? I can see it from a consumer/producer of information from mobile
>> devices, or analytics, and so on, but not too clear on the main use
>> case shown here.
>
>
> This gets to the response I would really like! How would you like to use a
> P2PU API. If you can submit a scenario about the way that you would like to
> use the API, we will greatly appreciate that! You don't need to include all
> the nitty gritty API details, but we would like to know how you would like
> to use an API and what data/functionality you would like to be exposed?
>
> Cheers
> d
>
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