biolizard89 wrote:somename wrote:1) Right, id/. I had spent too much time reading about the other approach..
2) dnschain.info: didn't know that, the site looks alive and ZeroNet docs mention DNSchain as supported.
Okay, so what I'm interested in is what approach could be used to fetch d/ and id/ details the way DNSchain makes/made it possible (Web API).
I was hoping the existing DNSchain plugin for Zeronet could be modified to also query id/ details, but if that is not maintained, then something would have to be done from scratch (at least as far as Zeronet is concerned).
So, sounds like what you're looking for is basically a REST API implementation for retrieving name data.
A few questions about what you want:
Do you want the API to handle imports for you, or are you planning to be responsible for this yourself?
Do you expect untrusted users to use this API?
Do you expect users to trust the server, or do you want the server to be untrusted?
Do you actually need it to be REST-based? E.g. would an Electrum server that can serve name data meet your use case? (Electrum protocol would require less trust of the server, since it supplies a DMMS for each result.)
What kind of load are you expecting to be put on the API server?
I might have additional questions later, but the above should help get some discussion going.
Thanks.
Q1: Do you want the API to handle imports for you, or are you planning to be responsible for this yourself?
I'd have to plan more to answer this precisely, but I suppose a middle of the road answer could be: I'd be happy for the API or script to start with a list of id's, query the server for me, and store matches results in CSV file(s) (say, several fields from each matching ID, such as bitcoin, bitmessage, namecoin, otr).
Q2: Do you expect untrusted users to use this API?
No, for now it's assumed trusted user will run the API/batch script.
Q3: Do you expect users to trust the server, or do you want the server to be untrusted?
I'd pick the easier variant, assume the server serving NMC data is trusted, as this is merely for reference rather than for transactional use of Namecoin id/ namespace.
Q4: Do you actually need it to be REST-based? E.g. would an Electrum server that can serve name data meet your use case? (Electrum protocol would require less trust of the server, since it supplies a DMMS for each result.)
It can be anything based, even the NMC CLI (Bash, Python, Ruby, or JS), as long as it doesn't take a lot of resources (but if it runs once a day, then it can take up to 500 MB of RAM when it does run).
Note: yesterday I still didn't know the exact size of the NameCoin data, but in the meantime I installed and caught up and I see I'd need less than 5 GB for the client, so queries could be made to the local NMC server which I can run 1 hour per day, just to let it catch up before I run this script/program.
Something like: fetch ID's from the user DB table, query those IDs on the NMC blockchain, INSERT fields like PGP & Bitcoin to matching ID records.
Q5: What kind of load are you expecting to be put on the API server?
A small community. Imagine if you wanted this forum's members profiles to be populated based on "id/" they entered.
The sole purpose is that users don't have to populate and maintain their personal data (say, you change your bitmessage address in NMC, it gets updated on the forum).