elementary-dev-community team mailing list archive

[Joshua Strobl <truthfromlies@xxxxxxxxx>]

There is a limiting factor on what we can implement from third parties. 
For instance, with Ubuntu Reviews API, we (along with everyone else) 
has read-only access, therefore we are not able to apply our own 
ratings and reviews (obviously a write process). This is already going 
to be covered in the API, I'll be pushing out code by the end of the 
week (hopefully) that will handle a portion of this.

The general idea is to either completely pull all the reviews / ratings 
from Ubuntu, pretty much regarding every application (although I'd 
prefer we only limit to applications that are actually popular) and 
store them in our own database. This will ensure that any breaking 
changes that occur in Ubuntu's Reviews API do not affect AppCenter, 
since the reviews are stored with us anyways. Another idea would be to 
continue pulling reviews / ratings from Ubuntu's Reviews API and only 
store reviews / ratings by elementary OS users.

It is really up to group consensus. This isn't so much about rewriting 
things, its more like leveraging existing APIs to get a good jumpstart 
on an AppCenter.

I would appreciate if you'd follow 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/appcenter/+bug/1091406, as I'll be posting 
details, potentially initial JSON formatted string files (for showing 
how some of the data will be structured when being requested via an 
HTTP Request) and at some point I'll link to the repo for the API.

- Joshua Strobl

On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 3:29 AM, Goncalo Margalho <g@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
wrote:
> So we are going to rewrite it? Why in linux community people like to 
> rewrite things? We need to plan stuff to work on in and then 
> implement. Here, everyone likes just to implement. Why dont we think 
> about the future. Use our brains to build something that it will stay 
> like this?
>
> On Mar 26, 2013 10:07 AM, "Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff" 
> <sergey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 2013/3/26 Goncalo Margalho <g@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > I think that the AppCenter now is just a wrapper of packagekit, i 
> > > mean, instead of using apt you use AppCenter, how do you add 
> > > reviews? paying apps etc?
> >
> > No, it's not. PackageKit API does not provide application 
> > screenshots, for example. They're fetched on-demand from 
> > http://screenshots.ubuntu.com/ or http://screenshots.debian.org/ 
> > (they're the same website anyway).
> >
> > As for paid apps, there's a staggering number of possibilities. 
> > Ideally we'd use something distribution- and vendor-independent, and 
> > I have a few ideas on how to achieve that. But IMO it's too early to 
> > discuss implementing paid apps yet. We'll design the architecture 
> > for that when we get there.
> >  
> > --
> > Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff
> > OS architect @ elementary