Sensorpedia API Documentation now available for BETA testers 2 Comments
The Sensorpedia development team is happy to announce that a draft version of the Sensorpedia Application Programming Interface (API) documentation is now available for BETA testers! The document describes our use of the Atom Syndication Format as a basis for the Sensorpedia RESTful web services. The API is designed to provide an easy mechanism for interfacing autonomous and incompatible sensor data to existing and future enterprise applications. To utilize the Sensorpedia framework, sensors and sensor systems are registered with Sensorpedia using Sensorpedia’s Atom-based API. Registered sensors may communicate and publish data with either standards-based or proprietary protocols. Applications such as the Sensorpedia web application and other third party software discover and subscribe to sensor data using the Sensorpedia API. Some data providers may choose to use the Sensorpedia API directly to post sensor data updates. Others may use the framework to provide links to existing systems or services that provide users the ability to subscribe directly to the sensor system.
The Sensorpedia API is based on the Atom Syndication Format, an XML language used for web feeds. The Atom 1.0 specification was released in December 2005 by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Web syndication standards such as Atom and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) were originally developed to provide an automated method to check for updates published on a web site without requiring a user to visit a site in a browser. Instead, Atom publishes a list (or “feed”) of recent articles or content in a standardized, machine-readable format. Many feed readers and aggregators have been developed to manage feed subscriptions. The Atom content model is flexible and extensible, and the specification was written to support a wide variety of content beyond web site update notifications.
The Atom model also allows for links to additional resources for visualization, alternate format representations, and any number of other requirements. The Sensorpedia API uses the Atom content model to represent registered sensor systems and to provide subscription links to observation data. Since the Atom specification supports extensions, the Sensorpedia API specifies the GeoRSS format to represent spatial information associated with each sensor entry. A simple RESTful web service interface is used to provide insert, update, delete, and query operations on the stored Atom documents. In addition, the AtomPub protocol may also be used to access stored Atom documents.
The Atom-based API does not constrain data publishers to a given data format for representing observation data. Rather, the API provides the ability to link to any number of representations of the data, such as Atom, GeoRSS, SensorML, Web Feature Service (WFS), Sensor Observation Service (SOS), HTML, or other proprietary formats. The Atom format also allows the embedding of observation data within the feed document itself, making the Atom feed self contained.
If you have indicated interest in becoming a Sensorpedia BETA tester, you will soon receive an email with instructions for accessing our new Sensorpedia collaboration portal to have access to the full API document. The collaboration portal is also a great place to submit your feedback, comments, and suggestions so we can continue to improve the Sensorpedia application and framework. If you haven’t yet signed up as a beta tester, there’s still time to get involved! Sign up today!
Update! May 26, 2009
The Sensorpedia API Documentation is now viewable for non BETA testers as well. If you’d like to edit pages or leave comments, you’ll still need to be an official “collaborator”. If you’d like to be added as a collaborator, please let us know and we’ll add you to the list and give you further instructions.
Just curious where this stands, since it has been 20 months since this webpage was updated. Thanks!
Rick, this post links to our old API documentation from our initial beta (alpha?) release. We’ve updated the API a number of times since that document was published. We’ve been using the API internally for a number of projects for our customers. We’re looking forward to publishing details about the updated API soon, along with an updated beta application.