API Docs

[Shekhar Krishnan]

As discussed in my meeting at NYPL last week, here are some basic docs
on the Gazetteer API:

http://support.topomancy.com/projects/gazetteer/wiki/ApiDocs

Please let us know if you have any questions or clarifications. Paul at
NYPL Labs said he would follow up.

Thanks,


S.K.
--

Shekhar Krishnan
Topomancy LLC

http://shekhar.cc
http://topomancy.com

[David Riordan]

For everyone who wants to start hacking on the NYC Chronology of Place API, here's that documentation (that doesn't require a login to view):

https://gist.github.com/riordan/19a5ebe68536825648f6

[Corey A Harper]

This is very cool, David,

A couple of quick questions. I did a search for Brooklyn Heights:

http://dev.nypl.gazetteer.in/1.0/place/search.json?q=Brooklyn%20Heights

It looks like what I got back was a list of building addresses, with very specific lat/long values, but the primary name for all of them is Brooklyn Heights Historic District, with what appear to be more specific Columbia Heights street adresses in an alt field. 

However, when I do a search for Bowery, it's more what I'd expect, with addresses in the name field.

http://dev.nypl.gazetteer.in/1.0/place/search.json?q=bowery

Also, I can't tell how to include feature code limits in my query string. For example, I'd like to filter out BLDG, as my results seem to be primarily buildings at this time, and I'm not sure what administrative level I'm actually looking for.

Finally, what can you tell me about the www.nyc.gov/html/ URIs in the results. At a glance, some seem to have pattern "dcp/html/bytes/applbyte.shtml.[num]" while others seem to havedatamine/html/data/terms.html?dataSetJs=geo.js&theIndex=[num]... Oddly, both types of results seem to often be included in BLDG codes.

Sorry for the deluge of questions, and feel free to tell me "Leave me alone, you'll find out next Tuesday..."

Thanks,

-Corey

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Corey A Harper
Metadata Services Librarian
New York University Libraries
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corey....@nyu.edu

[David Riordan]

To answer your question about neighborhoods, we need to load a better neighborhood layer into the service. It'll require some work, but one of the things we hope to do during the event is load in betashapes for NYC neighborhoods - crowd sourced neighborhood designations created from the geo data of Flickr photos (along with the Gownus Heights shape file).

​As for the other questions, if anyone from Topomancy could field this it'd be much appreciated. 

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Sent from Mailbox for iPad

[Tim Waters]

Hi Corey,

I have added the examples for search in a fork of the gist:

https://gist.github.com/timwaters/c19a67c8e339b8ea5893

This may give some more guidance. Otherwise, I'd recommend looking at the user interface at dev.nypl.gazetteer.in and seeing what the application sends to the API via a javascript console. The UI uses the API wholly, so anything that can do, you can do too!

More generally the query string parameter uses the Lucene query format. So, for example, I think both things will work for excluding a specific feature_code

feature_code:(NOT BLDG)

feature_code:(-BLDG) 

Finally, what can you tell me about the www.nyc.gov/html/ URIs in the results. At a glance, some seem to have pattern "dcp/html/bytes/applbyte.shtml.[num]" while others seem to havedatamine/html/data/terms.html?dataSetJs=geo.js&theIndex=[num]... Oddly, both types of results seem to often be included in BLDG codes

Again looking at what the UI sends here may help - but using the Source selection button - which selects which origin or source the data comes from, and the regex (code field) to be passed in the query string for that. 

I do think that we should add an API method to get these origin / source information though, I've also added these another gist in the meantime: https://gist.github.com/timwaters/5685396

Cheers,

Tim

[Corey A Harper]

Tim,

Thanks so much for this. The UI layer + Chrome Dev Tools definitely is the best way to piece together how the API's working, and the gist of source codes / URL patterns definitely explains my other question.

This is a tremendously cool resource you're all building, and I'm looking forward to some more indepth playing tomorrow. If I manage to pull it together in time, I'm bringing a pile of place names culled from the databases of the Museum of the City of New York and the New York Historical Society. I also may be able to pull some things from some other data streams I have kicking around -- particularly the Center for Jewish History's EAD records, though that extraction may have to be something that I do onsite tomorrow.

David: Agreed re: Neighborhood Names, and fantastic news re: betashapes & Gownas Heights shapefile. What GIS software are you folks hacking in? And have you considered sourcing some data from stuff like these:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/bytes/meta_nhood.shtml

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/bytes/meta_nynta.shtml

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/bytes/meta_interest.shtml

Or rather, for that matter, just from all the crap here:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/bytes/applbyte.shtml

and here:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/bytes/dwndistricts.shtml

... Okay, enough of that for now. Will maybe ask more questions tomorrow morning.

-Corey