Difference between revisions of "SoC webservices revisited"

Revision as of 11:22, 24 February 2008

Incentive

As part of the 2007 Summer of Code, a webservices API has been implemented in Geeklog. It provides the basic framework (RESTful communication, authentication) and implements the Atom Publishing Protocol (RFC 5023, Atompub) for stories and the plugin API (with the Static Pages plugin as a sample implementation).

In this project, we would like the student to look into areas where the webservices could also be added and, possibly, where they need changes or additions.

Goals

The following areas would appear to make useful additions to the webservices API:

• image upload in stories
• story submissions
• comments

This is not a fixed list of features that must be implemented. The student and mentor will have to review the amount of work required to implement these and may decide to re-focus the project accordingly. They could also identify other areas where support for the webservices may make more sense and decide to implement those instead (or in addition).

Details

Image Upload

When using the Admin's version of the story editor, a user can upload images that are to be used in the article (includes automatic thumbnail creation, link to the full-size version, etc.). This has been left out in the original implementation of the webservices API for the stories.

Atompub includes support for images. Therefore, it should be possible to implement the image upload via the webservices API so that an Atompub client can be used to publish articles with images in them.

Story Submissions

A Geeklog site allows visitors to submit stories for publication on the site. These will usually have to be approved by a moderator first. Story submissions are stored in a separate submission queue until approved (or rejected). The webservices API should be extended to allow users to submit stories and moderators to approve or reject (delete) submissions.

Since moderation of submissions is also available for plugins (through Geeklog's plugin API), it would be preferrable if this could be implemented in such a manner that webservices access is also available for plugins.

Comments

Comments by readers are supported for stories and plugins using the comment plugin API (e.g. Polls, Static Pages). There should be a way for users to submit (and possibly edit) their comments through the webservices API.

Note: This may have to be coordinated with the attempts to improve the comment handling, should that project be picked up again.