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 six databases.

Resources

Anything accessible through the API is a "resource". All available resources can be listed.

Get list of observation types

Query

https://api.flarecast.eu/resources/list

Result

{
	{
    "people" : {
        "description": "Persons or groups responsible",
        "baseURL": "
    },
    "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/
    },
}

File Archive

The file archive is basically a directory structure from where the files can be loaded either through the file:// protocol or (preferably) the http:// protocol.

Get list of observation types

Query

https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/list

Result

{
	"sdo_hmi_45" : {
		"description" : "SDO HMI LOS",
		"baseURL" : "https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/sdo/hmi/$year/$month/$day/$filepattern"
	},
	"sdo_hmi_720" : { ... }
}

Search for files

Query

https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/sdo/hmi/list?timerange=20150101T000000.0-20150101T120000.0

Result

{
	"https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/sdo/hmi/45/2015/01/01/hmi_45_los_00:00:00.fits",
    "https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/sdo/hmi/45/2015/01/01/hmi_45_los_00_00_45.fits",
    "https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/sdo/hmi/45/2015/01/01/hmi_45_los_00_01_30.fits",
    "https://api.flarecast.eu/observations/sdo/hmi/45/2015/01/01/hmi_45_los_00_02_15.fits",
	...
}

Template

Query

Result