People like me, or lets say many enom users, just a simple minimal feature API that uses say URL encoding would have taken care of me very well. I don't need the full up system, justa simple basic management system for myself; whois, DNS, LOCK, etc, updates. And register domains. I've got "personal reseller" accounts and I'd like to automate some of my management since I can / since I have the programming skills -- And there are many like me as you know. :)
As for the full up system "simple" is to have solid docs; attentive to make sure the docs are right. "Simple" is to provide verbose examples, like when I'd asked for examples of an encoded access key and then everyone accused me of being a hacker and trying to break into peoples account ... Whatever.
As for the exact implemention I myself don't like the XML / formatted dialogs. I prefer the URL encoding of enoms system, it's cake to build the string in any language. But not having really thrashed things out I'm not sure that's possible.
Stepping back and trying to view from 30,000 feet I actually very much dislike how programming seems to me to want to allways throw yet anothor absraction layer into things, XML being another one. The context of domain management is fairly mature and very well understood ... "Advances" like EPP do mess with things and mike life a mess ...
That all said, and as arcaic as my suggestion is, just flat text files with property:value is what I'd love to see as it's about as language agnostic as I can think of, perhaps like an INI file format. One property list the command and the properties need for that command are used all others are left out or are just blank. Array'd fields perhaps would be formated Property:[element]:Value.
And here are 2 things that really drive me nuts about *ALL* programming langauges and the Tucows API has thie problem big time: Case Sensitivity. Everything *CASE AGNOSTICE*! Go into the profile manager and type a domain with any character upper case and it will not find the domain! I've complained about this many times, tech suport aggrees it's an issue and yet it never gets fixed. My domaim manager (wrote it myself) has my domain Upper and Lower case to make them more readable (and yes code the sorts are that much more difficult due to case agnositic operation) and so I can't cut and paste from my management app into the profile manager, I have to *RETYPE* everything to in effect manually implement the Lower() function .... And the API is full of similar case sensitivity so I spent as much time literally fighting the API as I did trying to write my needed functionality.
And one more thing, just having the API flip the bird at me when something is wrong *IS NOT* very productive .... Simple API means interactive == Verbose Errors, no flipping the bird, *TELL ME* / give me a clue what you did not like about what I sent.
That's my 2 cents. :)
Thanks for listening Ross. :)
On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 00:24:00 -0400 "Ross Wm. Rader" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 4/19/2005 11:17 PM [EMAIL PROTECTED] noted that:
I can't help but feel that a really simple to interface to API would be a benefit to Tucows.
I'd agree with that. It would be very helpful if "simple" was defined to some degree.
-- Regards,
-rwr
"In the modern world the intelligence of public opinion is the one indispensable condition for social progress."
- Charles W. Eliot (1834 - 1926)
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