This is tremendous news guys - unless this is already on your list, may I suggest exposing via the API user geographic coordinates?
An Ohloh API is coming
One of the most difficult challenges of running Ohloh is deciding which, among the plethora of great ideas, to implement next. You (our community) are continually suggesting very interesting ideas - as well as requesting reasonable bug fixes. With our current resources, I figure we could spend the next year just working on the stuff you've proposed already - without taking account the suggestions that keep on coming.
Beyond that, we also have some "internally"-motivated features (money!). Actually, it's not just money - we also want to push forward with our vision of where we see Ohloh going.
All of which leaves us with agonizing choices to make. Fix a bug? Implement a requested feature? Or push Ohloh forward?
As a partial remedy to this problem, we're going to open up our service so that anyone can leverage our data and build on it. This will :
- enable integration of ohloh data into any widgets, apps, etc...
- address the problem that Ohloh is currently a data black hole (difficult to get data out)
So far, we are planning on creating a REST API on top of ohloh, enabling the ability get information on projects, accounts, stacks, etc... We would support XML and JSON out/in and also require a free API key that would limit the number of requests a day (to keep our servers reponsive).
What could one do with this?
I'm hoping you tell us. Off the top of my head, I imagine people might want to
- track who has kudo'd them
- write a doap converter
- resurface project analytics into their own websites
- enrich a user identity with Ohloh stats
- derive your own data, like what is the most popular language in the UK?
While we're still designing this feature, now is the time to pipe up and provide feedback and concerns. Thanks in advance!
Comments (7) 
about 1 year ago
about 1 year ago
Any idea on timing? And what kind of limit are you thinking of on the API key?
about 1 year ago
dartar: yes - we will include include account geolocation. Basically anything you could screen scrape will be exposed (in due time). May I ask what you're interested in doing with the geographic data?
kps: we might be able to ship this by the end of next week. Actual feature is almost done - but the documentation is taking a while.
We haven't settled on the limit yet. I suspect this will be affected by how much demand we get and what kind of load it creates on our servers. Right now we're aiming for 5,000 requests per 24 hour period.
about 1 year ago
Sounds great.
about 1 year ago
Jason, I don't know yet :) but I'd like to think of the possibilities of an Ohloh/Google Maps mashup.
about 1 year ago
Amazing news! Don't forget to take me into account for the early tests! :)
about 1 year ago
dartar: The google mashup is a great idea. I suspect many sites would love to have a map showing "where are the users/contributors". One problem is that every site would need to get its own google key - that should be ok, eh?
tobias: We've release a small subset of the api already -> here.