Re: packages.debian.org/search - debDroid (pdo on mobile devices)
Hello Philipp,
On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 10:56:52PM +0200, Philipp Mangelow wrote:
> first I want to say thank you, that you give us also the option to
> search for packages(-informations) with a webbrowser.
>
> I made an Android app, that actually scraps the most interesting parts
> from a search result and show them in a native android gui.
>
> Webscrapping is of course an ugly way to collect that data. But the real
> interfaces that I found - DDE and PTS - can't do a free text search for
> packages, as far as I know.
packages.debian.org source are available at http://packages.debian.org/about/
You may provide us a patch for a YAML or JSON interface.
In my opinion, having a CSS suited for mobile devices would be easier and
better (so any visitor can benefit of the mobile UI).
> Today I started the app and the package names (strings) couldn't be
> retrieved, so probably the html code changed.
>
> My regex-pattern for this matched "Package (.*?)</h3>". And I also send
> the used language setting of the android device to get language specific
> descriptions.
I'm not sure which part of which page you are referring too, I cannot
search/check in git.
Anyway you can find recent commits in the git repo listed on the about page as
well.
> In general I want to ask you, did you changed something recently in the
> code? If yes, was it convidence or did you do it because of the android
> app?
I was not aware of the app.
> Of course, this regex pattern can be fixed. But If you don't want that
> kind of webscrabing, I won't fix it and of course remove the app from
> github and playstore.
>
> I want to apologize that I just released the app without asking you.
Well I'd say webscrabing is designed to fail sooner or later :(
Looking for your mobile CSS and/or JSON/YAML interface :)
Best regards.
--
Simon Paillard
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