This document contains various proposals how the FLARECAST REST API could look like The idea is that all algorithms communicate through REST URLs with the databases.
URLs are used to create, read, update and delete records (CRUD). As data exchange format we propose to use JSON. JSON can be natively read by many programming languages, such as Python, IDL, Java, JavaScript, ...
This document does not contain a normative definition of the API, but rather examples that can be used for further discussions.
As illustrated in the Architecture overview the FLARECAST infrastructure consists of several logical databases. All of these databases store different types of resources.
| Database | Resource |
|---|---|
| Data Archive | Observation (e.g. FITS-Files) |
| Staging Table | Event, ... (e.g. Event lists) |
| Feature Property Database | Feature (such as Active Regions), FeatureProperty (e.g. Area, Contour, Zurich-Class, ...) |
| Predictions Config DB | Scalars, Vectors, Matrices (e.g. Algo-Configurations) |
| Prediction DB | ? |
| Infrastructure Configuration DB | Algorithm, Person, |
Standards
- Dates should be in ISO 8601
- Date/Time formats should follow http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime
- URI Templates: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6570
- Collection+JSON: http://amundsen.com/media-types/collection/
The API is self-documenting such that there a single entry point to all databases.
Resources
Anything accessible through the API is a "resource". All available resources can be listed.
| Get list of observation types | |
|---|---|
| Query | http://api.flarecast.eu/api/v1/resources/list |
| Result | {
{
"people" : {
"description": "Persons or groups responsible",
"baseURL": "https://api.flarecast.eu/people/"
},
"algorithms" : {
"description" : "Registered algorithms (read-only)",
"baseURL" : "https://api.flarecast.eu/algorithms/"
},
"features" : {
"description" : "Features accessible through this API",
"baseURL" : "https://api.flarecast.eu/features/"
},
"observations" : {
"description" : "Observations accessible through this API",
"baseURL" : "https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/"
},
...
}
|
Observations
The file archive is basically a directory structure from where the files can be loaded through the http:// protocol.
| Get list of available observation types | |
|---|---|
| Query | http://api.flarecast.eu/api/v1/observations |
| Result | {
"sdo_hmi_720" : {
"description" : "SDO HMI",
"baseURL" : "https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/sdo/hmi/fits/",
"filepattern": "${YYYY}/${MM}/${DD}/hmi.M_720s_nrt.${YYMMDD}_${nr}_TAI.fits",
"timeBegin": "2015-01-01T00:00:00Z",
"timeEnd": "2015-04-20T00:00:00Z"
},
"sdo_hmi_45" : { ... }
}
|
| Search for files | |
|---|---|
| Query | http://api.flarecast.eu/api/v1/observations/sdo/hmi/list?timerange=20150101T000000.0-20150101T120000.0 |
| Result | {
"https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/sdo/hmi/fits/2015/04/20/hmi.M_720s_nrt.20150420_010000_TAI.fits",
"https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/sdo/hmi/fits/2015/04/20/hmi.M_720s_nrt.20150420_020000_TAI.fits",
"https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/sdo/hmi/fits/2015/04/20/hmi.M_720s_nrt.20150420_030000_TAI.fits",
...
}
|
Feature Properties
| Get list of features | |
|---|---|
| Query | http://api.flarecast.eu/api/v1/features/list |
| Result | {
"id": {
"type": "long"
},
"timestamp": {
"type": "datetime"
},
"area": {
"type": "double",
"unit": "m2",
"version": 5
},
"contour": {
"type": "int[]",
"description": "chaincode, 0 is left, 1-7 is direction counter clockwise",
"version": 1
}
}
|
| Template | |
|---|---|
| Query | http://api.flarecast.eu/api/v1//features/query?time_begin=20150101T000000.0&time_end=20150101T000000.0&fields=id,timestamp,area,contour |
| Result | {
"id": {
"type": "long"
},
"timestamp": {
"type": "datetime"
},
"area": {
"type": "double",
"unit": "m2",
"version": 5
},
"contour": {
"type": "int[]",
"description": "chaincode, 0 is left, 1-7 is direction counter clockwise",
"version": 1
},
"data": [
[
1,
"2015-01-01T10:20:00.0",
12321,
[0,1,1,1,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,7,7,0]
],
[
2,
"2015-01-01T10:20:45.0",
14412,
[0,1,1,1,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,7,7,0]
],
[
3,
"2015-01-01T10:21:30.0",
14434,
[0,1,1,1,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,5,5,6,6,7,7,7,7,0]
]
]
}
|
Template
| Template | |
|---|---|
| Query | |
| Result | |
2012-04-23T18:25:43.511Z