Re: ANN: RSS 'ping' interface at fyuze.com

["jdklub" <pseudonym@mindspring.com>]

> You either want to ask everyone to start supporting a new API 
>(difficult on
> their end) or you suffer the hassle of using the "wrong" URL being 
> submitted and
> clean up after it with local processing (hassle on your end).

see, this where i am continually confused/aggrevated/dumbfounded. 
this is a different application with a different set functions and 
requirements. why should one be forced to use and API that does not 
fit the need at hand, because an API with similar, yet different, 
functionality exists? what then is the point of having XML-RPC, 
SOAP, etc? Does this mean that every time someone creates a new API, 
someone else will come along a say "well app X does something sort 
of like what you're doing. you really ought to try to bend your 
requirements to fit their existing API"? i thought the point of XML-
RPC and SOAP was to make it easy to hook into other peoples apps and 
services using a standard interface. it is not hard to make calls to 
any API once you understand how XML-RPC works, especially if you 
have a library or toolkit to use. it seems as though we completely 
miss the point of having things like XML-RPC and SOAP if we force 
people to use existing, mis-matched*, APIs instead of making 
interfaces that meet the requirements of the situtaion.

is five lines of code really too much to ask?

$url = 'your-rss-feed';
$struct = array('url' => new xmlrpcval($url, 'string'));
$func = new xmlrpcmsg('fyuze.ping', array(new xmlrpcval
($struct, 'struct')));
$client = new xmlrpc_client('/api/xml-rpc/', 'fyuze.com', 80);
$resp = $client->send($func);

now, in other areas, there is a need for a common API. all the 
blogging platforms could use a more-robust, vendor-neutral, easily 
expandable, API as their overlap in functionality is great. but 
that's a discussion for another list on another day. 

* i am not trying to indicate that the weblogs.com API is "bad," 
simply that it does not fit the requirements of this particular 
application.