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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

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thecrag.com 9-Nov-2010 At 9:27:25 AM brendan.heywood

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rolsen1 I completely agree that we need more sharing of climbing data and better tools to manage the data. Before I joined forced with thecrag I had started to make my own database for my local crags and wanted an open format for sharing data. I started this google group to share my thoughts:

http://code.google.com/p/climbing-api/

This attempt was based around extending Atom and is pretty rough. I've spoken with a couple people from different databases and most of them are keen to support some sort of interchange format but there are a lot of challenges to work through, like licensing differences and different data models.

I've since joined forces with thecrag and we are now working on a rich api for both reading and updating data. We have lots of ideas from some simple api features like atom feeds for updates, and i-frame based crag summaries that you could embed on your own site, all the way up to a fully featured json api that say 3rd party mobile device apps could use for logging ascents and adding new routes, or a dynamic export so you can view and edit a particular crag but embedded inside a local climbing clubs website.

I'd welcome any input from anyone interested (aus climbing asoc) in helping develop common standards for sharing climbing data or in using our api. I don't know of any other climbing sites that have an open api so we'll build one and then continually evolve it to support any open climbing standards that emerge as time goes on. Our first version of the public api should be ready early next year.

Brendan