Is there an API or similar to access user's points and stuff on SCN?

[Former Member]

Hi All,

As per the title really, I wondered if there is an API or similar that would allow me to read a user's public info, such as SCN Points, last contribution etc.? I have a widget activated on my LinkedIn account and wondered how it works?

Any pointers or maybe content areas on here that people can direct me to will be greatly appreciated as I have no doubt I've probably missed all the information about this!

Thanks,

Gareth.

[martinlang · Accepted solution]

Have you seen what SAP Mentor has done on [http://blog.zsapping.com/products/|http://blog.zsapping.com/products/]?

If you click into the details he has built a blogger.com & wordpress widget as well as a Google Gadget for an SCN Contributor view, that shows points, recent contributions etc.

Am currently not aware, that the APIs he used are documented somewhere and personally I am not technical enough yet on SCN to understand it all, most of my technical experience lies in other areas.

However probably you learn from what he did...

[OttoGold · Accepted solution]

Hello Martin, that is a nice one:)) Didn´t know such thing exist.

There is only one problem with the solution. I am no PHP expert, but after reading the code for like 5 minutes:

- the "program" use your SDN number to generate the URL to your profile

- the "program" downloads the page content, the profile of yours

- parse it (like strings... middle ages? but looks like the only option thou)

- display the two (or how many) strings with the numbers

Oliver have accomplished a nice job, but he managed to do this without any SAP/SDN help. He spotted how the URL works, how the source code of the page looks like etc. Maybe you could start a SAP/SDN official API for this? Like the set of weservices? Or a single one with some fancy methods? That would be cool.

Don´t want to sound offensive, I appreciate the job, but the "technology" is funny:)) If you want to laugh at me as well, I ahve used the same parsing approach for my bachelor thesis parsing various pages to collect the data from there.

Regards Otto

[OttoGold · Accepted solution]

I am not sure if the message is clear, so a little addon:

- I don´t want to guess the URL and then "steal" and shatter the page from SDN

- I want a service with method like (Java syntax?:)))

public int getPointsForUser(String userID) which returns a single value like "42".

Otto

[martinlang · Accepted solution]

Your message is very clear Otto no worries. And yes, I am fully aware, that parsing html data and interpreting it after the fact is relatively low tech.

There is an Idea in Idea Place for establishing a common REST API interface for all or most of SCN's content and collaboration areas that we could then leverage, here's a link to the idea: [https://ideas.sap.com/ideas/1013|https://ideas.sap.com/ideas/1013]

If you can logon to Idea Place currently, please vote on it and even better, comment on it, what benefits you see, possibly even how you would approach it. Currently my interpretation is, that we have a common agreement, that it's a great idea, but we don't have a vision yet on how to manage to get there.

If you can help paint that vision with some specific technical ideas or suggestions, please reach out, either here on the forum or directly. I am confident we'll get there eventually, but at the same time I think if we could get some more technical folks, that actually understand what's needed and how to get there together to collaborate on this, it's likely that we could significantly accelerate the process of getting there.

[Former Member]

Thanks to all of the comments on this thread - it's nice to know it's not just me thinking about this and even better to know that there is already something potentially in progress.

I'd not seen the idea on Idea Place - hopefully it will see fruition.

As far as I'm concerned, the idea of a REST based public API is perfect.

Thanks,

Gareth.

[marilyn_pratt]

Another pointer for looking at aggregated content for a user would be by knowing the system generated userid and looking at the url that links to user's record of contribution.

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/mypoints?userid=cf4nlgggdgl4k5u2n9sgva%3d%3d

[marilyn_pratt]

You are probably aware that there is an aggregation for RSS feeds that some of us use in our wiki profile. It's using the feedburner capabilities and by using some wiki markup language we can create a dynamic list of our most recent blogs in the wiki.

For example I use: http://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/pub/q/weblog_rss_author?x-author=1915&x-ver=1.0

In this case 1915 is my blog profile ID and by using the RSS feed enabled for my blog author ID I can display my 100 most recent blogs.

[OttoGold]

Then it would be two of us, because I have never seen such thing and would like to play with that, if that exists.

Regards Otto

p.s.: wanted to ask this question few times, but always chickened out:))

[Former Member]

Hi Otto,

I've given up hiding my stupid questions - I've asked enough over the years for it not to be a surprise any more!!

If I find any information I'll post it back here...

Gareth.

[OttoGold]

I wonder, what is your motivation for this game. I don´t mind your interest, since we share this one, but I am afraid some of the people around are a little suspicious and would ask you anyway, that is the reason I am here to ask first:))

I wanted to "visualize" my SCN contribution on my personal site and wanted to place a direct link to my contributions page (the one you get landed on when you click on the "Your Rew-ard Poi-nts" top right, but there is no information in the link, the user information is transferred through the session or certificate or something else. Or would like to place the same little "gadget" you can see on LinkedIn on the same personal page.

Or...what would be the best toy to play with: if the API would exist and would let me to play with various types of the content, I would create my own entry point for SCN and use it to speed up my daily "job" on SCN. Or (if that would be possible...) I would publish this "entry point" for all the people interested, who don´t like, like me, to click themselves to death when checking the updates of various content.

Otto

[Former Member]

I think my motivation is slightly more straight forward...

I've just got my first Android based handset (HTC Desire) and am playing around with the SDK to see what I can do. I just fancied making a little widget that showed SCN points if possible, more to expand my understanding of working with Web Services / API's in the Android SDK.

If I can't get access to the SCN API I'll just try something else!

Gareth.

[OttoGold]

Oh, man! You could have pretended a serious interest to help me get the SCN API:)))) Otto

[Former Member]

I think that there definitely is an API...That's probably what was used for the LinkedIn integration with SCN. Whether or not it's publicly available is probably a better question to ask...

Regards, Trevor

[OttoGold]

by API we both ment public API, I believe:)) If there is one, I want to have it rleeased for us, ordinary people:)) Otto