[wp-hackers] Help with the API on WordPress.org?

[Mike Schinkel]

DD32 <wordpress at dd32.id.au> wrote:
> as for caching, My understanding is that on .org they use
> very little caching at all, bbPress handles the high loads
> (or not so high..) fine.. caching would impact users access
> speeds though potentially (But that seems pretty damn quick
> too)

One of my complaints is how slow and tedious the page loading is in the
plugin search section of the admin. That's one of the reasons I decided to
pursue this.

Of course 2.7 is light-years better than prior versions because to install
each plugin they required downloading, ungzipping, untarring, FTPing,
activing, etc. but we humans acclimate to improvements really fast and soon
forget the pain of the past, and then we want more, more, more! :-)

> It could be very usable by people like yourself, on
> the other hand, It'd provide very little benefit to
> myself, or very little benefit over the current
> implementation.

Isn't that one of the beauties of life? We all have so many different
perspectives. If we all wanted the same thing in many cases we'd be fighting
over those same things. :-)

> I'm not trying to be defending of my own code, It
> was mearly the way i chose to do it at the time,
> I'd have done it exactly the way you outlined if
> it was the way i operated (in my sense, over
> engineering the problem) - anyway, Thanks for the
> read, it was good :)

And in no way am I criticizing your code. Though we've never conversed
before today I've seen your contributions have been significant and have
great respect for you. If all *my* prior code were placed under a microscope
I fear I'd not fair anywhere near as well as you would for a similar
analysis. :-)

I only discuss these topics in hopes for potential improvement but also
because defending my ideas helps me learn.

> as for caching, My understanding is that on .org they use
> very little caching at all, bbPress handles the high loads
> (or not so high..) fine.. caching would impact users access
> speeds though potentially (But that seems pretty damn quick
> too)

One of my complaints is how slow and tedious the page loading is in the
plugin search section of the admin. That's one of the reasons I decided to
pursue this.

Of course 2.7 is light-years better than prior versions because to install
each plugin they required downloading, ungzipping, untarring, FTPing,
activing, etc. but we humans acclimate to improvements really fast and soon
forget the pain of the past, and then we want more, more, more! :-)

> It could be very usable by people like yourself, on
> the other hand, It'd provide very little benefit to
> myself, or very little benefit over the current
> implementation.

Isn't that one of the beauties of life? We all have so many different
perspectives. If we all wanted the same thing in many cases we'd be fighting
over those same things. :-)

> I'm not trying to be defending of my own code, It
> was mearly the way i chose to do it at the time,
> I'd have done it exactly the way you outlined if
> it was the way i operated (in my sense, over
> engineering the problem) - anyway, Thanks for the
> read, it was good :)

And in no way am I criticizing your code. Though we've never conversed
before today I've seen your contributions have been significant and have
great respect for you. If all *my* prior code were placed under a microscope
I fear I'd not fair anywhere near as well as you would for a similar
analysis. :-)

I only discuss these topics in hopes for potential improvement but also
because defending my ideas helps me learn.

BTW if I were attempting to continue the debate I'd challenge that "over
engineered" comment, but I won't. :-)

> No reason why you couldnt do that at all IMO

Well I've started the first half and have come across what appear to be bugs
in the API.  I've double-checked my code to make sure it wasn't a stupid
error on my part (although it could still be) and I'm finding two unusual
situations:

1.) Even if you specify "downloads" as one of the request fields it does not
include it in the plugin objects in the response.
2.) If you include "downloadlink" in the request fields the response plugin
objects have a property "download_link." Alternately if you include
"download_link" in the request fields the response plugin objects won't have
any property for "download_link" or "downloadlink."

I don't really need # of downloads (at least not at the moment) and I can
work around issue #2 but I'd think someone would want to fix these?

Here is a pastebin that has a PHP file you can plot into the root for a 2.7
install that will demonstrate the problem:

   http://mikeschinkel.pastebin.com/f45f47aa4

-Mike Schinkel
http://mikeschinkel.com/