web api

zpinhead

I'd like to do the following:

save something to a group library from firefox
have another process login to that group library from a server somewhere,
nightly, look for new stuff, get those entries,
put them into another database (internal) , and delete them from the group library.

can i do this with the soap interface?

thanks!

rick

noksagt

You can get items form either SOAP or just plain RSS, but there is not yet an API for writing to the server, so you will not be able to delete items.

zpinhead

all right --
is there a way to
1) run a faceless firefox,
2) run some javascript within that firefox to delete items in the shared folder.
3) run the sync with the server so the items disappear.
4) close the faceless firefox.
???
or some relatively similar procedure?

ajlyon

Yes, that's possible, but it probably won't be easy. Take a look at Kieren's work on zotero-browser for ideas: http://github.com/singingfish/zotero-browser

ajlyon

Also, MozRepl is probably the most stable project to give you access to Zotero from outside Firefox. I believe that it is used to generate the citation previews in the styles directory of Zotero.org.

kieren

I did experiment with MozRepl. It doesn't cooperate very well with expensive processes - I had problems with more complex queries and getting the telnet connection to mozrepl to stay up, although it's a great tool for simple queries.

Your options for easy interaction inside firefox are listed here. My wish though is to get someone who actually knows how to write a bullet proof production grade web server to audit and fix the problems with POW, as the web app model works really well with the zotero API. However, I lack the skills, and all my friends who can write bullet proof servers are busy perl hackers.

Both POW and Zotero appear to run in XULrunner (I wonder if you can install both together). If so, you have a headless firefox and the Zotero API together. I think POW is more reliable on XULRunner than it is in Firefox (although it's still better in the versions of firefox it works in than than MozRepl for expensive queries).

A bullet proof web server running inside firefox and the development of some kind of simplified API based on this would be a good Google Summer of Code project.