After seeing the tweet about the shorturl, it occurred to me that it would be nice to use a modules release node id as a super short link to rollup a sandbox of that specific version: ie, http://ply.st/1979362 would be filefield_paths 7.x-1.0-beta4.

But as per the issue title, I spent some time checking out the data available to see if this could be done, and I came across the current process of gathering project information, being scrapping of html pages and it occurred to me that there must be a better way to do things.... which there is.

Much like the xml file that contains all projects hosted on D.o, there are also individual paths for project specific information, such as http://updates.drupal.org/release-history/filefield_paths/all, which contains all information about File (Field) Paths, including the release node (release_link) that isn't currently provided via the current methods.

I don't doubt that it's as simple as change the source, as there's probably some information missing with this alternate source that's needed for the sake of clone projects via GIT, but I suspect that the process can definitely be improved with this alternate source.

Happy to do the majority of the work as it's something that I want, but figured I should put this here as a point of discussion before I begin... if I have the patience to wait that is.

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#3 releases-1990932-3.patch5.3 KBDeciphered
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Deciphered’s picture

Deciphered CreditAttribution: Deciphered commented

One obvious issue with this source is that there is no version for Sandboxes.... but I think it's easy enough to just keep the current process in place for sandboxes while improving the full releases process,

patrickd’s picture

patrickd CreditAttribution: patrickd commented

In my first try to build simplytest.me I actually used the updates.drupal.org's API, but I soon ran against walls here as it only lists releases, not available branches and there was some other missing stuff I can't remember at the moment.

I'm not happy with the current process of scrapping things out of HTML either, but I personally would suggest not to waste any more time on this until drupal.org has D7 deployed and finally a serious API to work with.

I'd suggest to postpone this until #1710850: Deploy RestWS for D7 project issue JSON is done

Deciphered’s picture

Deciphered CreditAttribution: Deciphered commented
Status: Active » Needs work
FileSize
releases-1990932-3.patch5.3 KB

So this is what happens when I get ahead of myself, I go and do something that I know I should wait to do.

While this is more about the releases than the improving of the scraping stuff, find attached a patch that uses the updates url to get the release nid so that something like ply.st/1979362 could be used.

Not ready yet, as it doesn't have any handling if the data hasn't yet been acquired before the URL is accessed, but 90% of the way done.

Deciphered’s picture

Deciphered CreditAttribution: Deciphered commented
Title: Improve the project release information gathering » Introduce Release NIDs for pre-setting project and release.

Changing the topic of this issue, as as suggested waiting for improvements to D.o for improved scraping is necessary for a general improvement, but the Releases NID stuff can be done without that major improvement.

Will try to get the last part of this patch dealt with ASAP.

patrickd’s picture

patrickd CreditAttribution: patrickd commented
Issue summary: View changes
Status: Needs work » Closed (outdated)