NationStates API (nationdata/regiondata)

[Not a pipe]

One thing I want to do is to backup the public data of a nation (including factbooks, and history of changes), I can write a program to do so locally. It will run when the user runs it. I will not put it on a webpage but I will post the codes if you want it. Please tell me if there are things missing from API, or anything else of importance to do such things, or if such a program already exists (command-line is prefered).

[Scoochi2]

Would it be possible to add in an extra shard to indicate whether a region has a password or not?
Could this be included in the daily dump?

Possible examples:

Code: Select all

<PASSWORDED>None</PASSWORDED>

<PASSWORDED>Displayed</PASSWORDED>

<PASSWORDED>Hidden</PASSWORDED>

This would be very helpful.

ummm... please?

[Ballotonia]

Now live:
http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... lass,large

Ballotonia

[SunRawr]

Fantastic. Thank you!

[Fischistan]

Now live:
http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... lass,large

Ballotonia

Is this a multi tag search?

I love you Ballo!

[Zemnaya Svoboda]

Now live:
http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... lass,large

Ballotonia

Very nice

[Fischistan]

Now live:
http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... lass,large

Ballotonia

Could you make this have a feature to search for regions without a tag? Like q=regionsbytags;tags=world_assembly,-no_sc_campaignign

[[violet]]

Could you make this have a feature to search for regions without a tag? Like q=regionsbytags;tags=world_assembly,-no_sc_campaignign

You see, Ballo, you give them a feature and they want more... more... always more!

[Fischistan]

Could you make this have a feature to search for regions without a tag? Like q=regionsbytags;tags=world_assembly,-no_sc_campaignign

You see, Ballo, you give them a feature and they want more... more... always more!

Yep, that's how being a game-admin works! Get used to the extra work

[Crushing Our Enemies]

More, more, I'm still not satisfied!

[Fischistan]

Do the national events RSS feeds count as the API? Because I would like to know if we could access those at a rate similar to the API rate.

I want to bring this up again while [v] is here.

[Christian Democrats]

I've enjoyed looking at the data on the votes of WA members in specific regions.

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?region=catholic&q=gavote
http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?region=catholic&q=scvote

Could the information from these shards be added to the voting pages?

http://www.nationstates.net/page=ga
http://www.nationstates.net/page=sc

For example, on the General Assembly page, I currently see the following:

Votes For: 2,306

Votes Against: 6,529

[Delegate Votes]

Voting Ends: in 1 day 10 hours

Your Regional WA Delegate, Etnofaz, has voted FOR this resolution.

Christian Democrats: AGAINST

[Vote For][Withdraw Vote]

Maybe the General Assembly page (and the Security Council page) could look something like this:

Votes For: 2,306

Votes Against: 6,529

[Delegate Votes]

Voting Ends: in 1 day 10 hours

Your Regional WA Delegate, Etnofaz, has voted FOR this resolution.

In your region, the voting is currently 4 nation(s) for and 3 nation(s) against this resolution.

Christian Democrats: AGAINST

[Vote For][Withdraw Vote]

Possibly, information also could be added from this shard: http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?region=catholic&q=delegatevotes

Votes For: 2,306

Votes Against: 6,529

[Delegate Votes]

Voting Ends: in 1 day 10 hours

Your Regional WA Delegate, Etnofaz (19 votes), has voted FOR this resolution.

In your region, the voting is currently 4 nation(s) for and 3 nation(s) against this resolution.

Christian Democrats: AGAINST

[Vote For][Withdraw Vote]

I believe that making this change would bring valuable information to a greater number of players (i.e., the players who do not use the API). Also, for all we know, some players (especially new players) might not even know that their WA delegates receive additional votes. If the second change were made, this would inform them.

[Ballotonia]

Could you make this have a feature to search for regions without a tag? Like q=regionsbytags;tags=world_assembly,-no_sc_campaignign

You see, Ballo, you give them a feature and they want more... more... always more!

Yeah, but asking is the easiest way to get things implemented.

Added: http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... -minuscule

Requirement for use is starting off with at least one tag which doesn't have a "-" (technical reasons, this way it doesn't weigh too heavy on the server).

Ballotonia

[Fischistan]

You see, Ballo, you give them a feature and they want more... more... always more!

Yeah, but asking is the easiest way to get things implemented.

Added: http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... -minuscule

Requirement for use is starting off with at least one tag which doesn't have a "-" (technical reasons, this way it doesn't weigh too heavy on the server).

Ballotonia

I love you Ballotonia!

[Zemnaya Svoboda]

You see, Ballo, you give them a feature and they want more... more... always more!

Yeah, but asking is the easiest way to get things implemented.

Added: http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... -minuscule

Requirement for use is starting off with at least one tag which doesn't have a "-" (technical reasons, this way it doesn't weigh too heavy on the server).

Ballotonia

An excellent improvement

[Ballotonia]

It escapes me who asked for this, and I don't have time right now to re-read the thread to find out, but added to the API:

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... happenings

Ballotonia

[Zemnaya Svoboda]

It escapes me who asked for this, and I don't have time right now to re-read the thread to find out, but added to the API:

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... happenings

Ballotonia

I do not recall that, but I'll be happy to dive into this and see what I can dig up.



Oh... the great shoving-things-in-my-direction has started

That's cool, it leaves you more time to focus on the Telegram System rework. Win-win!

Ballotonia

I came here to ask about WA happenings, and was happy to see it'd already been asked

edit2: I show some pre-emptive gratitude.

But it was originally by...

[violet], do you think it would be possible to add a shard for the WA recent events? Similar to the region shard for regional happenings, but for WA recent events? It would make things much easier so I don't have to scrape the WA page just to get the recent events there.

Thank You!

And thank you thank you!

[Scoochi2]

It escapes me who asked for this, and I don't have time right now to re-read the thread to find out, but added to the API:

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api ... happenings

Ballotonia

Great! But any chance the pretitles could be dropped when nations CTE?
for example, instead of "The Dictatorship of Aaronopolis ceased to exist." could to go to "@@aaronopolis@@ ceased to exist." to match up with the other nation events?

[[violet]]

Great! But any chance the pretitles could be dropped when nations CTE?

It's not, at least not without changing how we store that information going forward. When a nation ceases to exist, we log it as plain text, not as a @@tag@@, because it's not going to load anyhow, and we want its full name to display.

There are downsides to this, and arguably it should be a tag. But it's not an API issue, it's a deeper game issue.

[Hyanygo]

1) I'm trying to find the nations that have become WA members in the last "X" days (in a specific region). I have a feeling that there is no reliable way to do this because the WA membership "signaller" happens in the "happenings" and this gets filled with legislation etc. Am I right?

2) An actual question What does the values in TIMESTAMP actually signify? For example, I have:

Code: Select all

<EVENT>
<TIMESTAMP>1339391669</TIMESTAMP>
<TEXT>
@@hyanygo@@ was ranked in the Top 10% of the region for Largest Mining Sector.
</TEXT>
</EVENT>

[Ballotonia]

1) I'm trying to find the nations that have become WA members in the last "X" days (in a specific region). I have a feeling that there is no reliable way to do this because the WA membership "signaller" happens in the "happenings" and this gets filled with legislation etc. Am I right?

2) An actual question What does the values in TIMESTAMP actually signify? For example, I have:

Code: Select all

<EVENT>
<TIMESTAMP>1339391669</TIMESTAMP>
<TEXT>
@@hyanygo@@ was ranked in the Top 10% of the region for Largest Mining Sector.
</TEXT>
</EVENT>

1: There is no way to obtain that information instantly, as the game doesn't keep a (public) record of who joined the WA at which time. However, if you were to store prior information, then this is possible to do this as a post-processing (using a script) step. Using the Nation Daily Data Dump you can see who is a WA member now. Using the same data dump from X days ago (and that's where you'd need to plan ahead and store these things) and comparing the list of WA nations in it, you could determine a list of nations which are WA members now but weren't X days ago.

2: That's a Unix time stamp. See: http://www.unixtimestamp.com/index.php
This particular one means, in EST: "06 / 11 / 12 @ 12:14:29am EST"

Ballotonia

[Johz]

A quick query here: With most api calls, the xml tag associated with that call is the same. Take the 'govt' call, which produces the <GOVT></GOVT> tag in the generated xml file.

However, some api calls have a different xml tag. However the 'wa' call produces the <UNSTATUS></UNSTATUS> tags.

While if you're looking for the specific 'wa' shard you can then compensate for that, if you're looking for a general shard this can be irritating. I can compensate for it, but it's not overly helpful that I don't know where this error's going to happen.

So, can you a) normalise all of the shard/xml parings, or b) tell me which shards are going to have this problem?

Thanks, Johz

[Ballotonia]

The idea is that a shard produces the same output as is in the XML data dump. If you find any discrepancies, please do let us know.

Ballotonia

[Johz]

The idea is that a shard produces the same output as is in the XML data dump. If you find any discrepancies, please do let us know.

Ballotonia

Well, there's that one I posted above, which is presumably a relic from the days of the UN.

All of the custom titles are also affected. I'm not sure if this is simply because testlandia has no custom titles defined, but customleader, customcapital, customreligion.

Nothing in the region method is affected, I don't think.

The World API only has one oddity: regionsbytags is different to the REGIONS xml tag.

The resolution+delvotes shard has two xml tags (DELVOTES_FOR and DELVOTES_AGAINST) but no actual DELVOTES.

I think that's all of the oddities in total. I realise some people have already got their own ways of dealing with this (Eluvatar just had a go at me on IRC) but is at possible to sort this out in a new API version? Or does no-one actually append that onto their calls?

[[violet]]

What B is getting at is that the daily dumps are only produced in the latest version number, so we can't change those without insta-breaking the tools of everyone who relies on them. We can update the API, but then we have the situation where the same data is tagged differently in the dumps versus the API. Which seems just as annoying as having the tags not always match the shard names.

There are some situations, such as 'customleader', where I don't think there's a good reason for the discrepancy (i.e. they're not in the daily dumps), so we could change those fairly painlessly.