2019-03-13 - Platform update

[Jirka Chadima]

Hello community,

today, I'm announcing a next release of Winding Tree platform. This time, we don't need to update the Winding Tree Index, but there are still some changes you should know about:

Data model changes

Breaking changes

  - Address format - we have changed the address format to be closer to Open Street Map data. It's less permissive, but offers more control over automated processing. For client-side processing, the address-formatter Javascript library can be used.

  - Rate Plan Price Modifiers - we have added a new way of modifying a price. Apart from percentage, you can now specify an absolute amount. Unfortunately, this means that all of the existing modifiers have to be updated with a unit field.

  - Amenities - Both room type and hotel amenities are now restricted by an enumeration. If you need to show something that's not in the enumeration, you can use the new field tags. Feel free to suggest to us more things that should go into the enumeration!

  - Properties - We have removed the properties field. But it will come back with more power, join the discussion and help us with the design.

New Features

  - Tags - Room type and hotel can now be tagged with custom tags. Eventually we would like to use this in search.

  - Category - Both room type and hotel can be assigned a category now. We have prepared enumerations of possible categories, so check them out.

  - Language declaration + Spoken Languages - The platform currently does not support localization of textual content. But we can at least tell the clients in which language the content is. In addition, we have added spokenLanguages field where the hotel can declare in what languages it can communicate.

  - Operator - Last but not least, every property is run by some legal entity. We have added an optional operator field which should contain this type of information.

Tooling changes

  - Data validation in Read API - Read API now actively validates data from off-chain storages against declared data format version. This spanned a small change in the API (wrapping all of lists into items property) which will probably break your client applications. If the data seems kind of alright, it is returned in warnings array so you can still work with it, but probably shouldn't. At least our Hotel Explorer and Search API don't work with that data.

  - Search API can search by hotel category and content locale

What do I need to do?

  - If you are (will be) publishing data into WT, you should immediately update the data export so it conforms to the breaking changes in data model. Write APIs deployed by WT will stop accepting the old format after the deployment

  - If you are consuming data in WT, you should immediately update your client logic to reflect changes in Read API and Search API.

The current versions that will get deployed can be found in the develop branch of every repository. There might be some small patches happening before the release, but nothing big should be merged before it.

We will be deploying the new versions to our demo and playground environment on Wednesday March 13th. Our goal is to make the transitions between releases and new data format versions as smooth as possible in the future and the improved validation model is a great step towards that.

If you have any questions or remarks, respond here or hit us up on Gitter, we value any feedback.

Thank you,

Jirka Chadima

[Jirka Chadima]

We managed to squeeze in a few more changes at the last minute. These are all optional data that can be passed alongside the booking request, so no immediate change in your Winding Tree integrations is needed.

- An optional identifier of the source system - https://github.com/windingtree/wt-booking-api/issues/15

- More details about the price formation can be sent with the request - https://github.com/windingtree/wt-booking-api/issues/14

Cheers, Jirka Chadima

[Jirka Chadima]

The deployment went smoothly, but as usual, we've discovered several bugs during that:

- https://github.com/windingtree/wt-read-api/issues/223

- https://github.com/windingtree/wt-booking-api/commit/81a7323327171005c97cfb84fac3896276b8f5df

Everything should be now operating normally in both playground and demo environment.

Jirka Chadima jiri.c...@fragaria.cz +420 607 258 316 https://fragaria.cz

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Winding Tree" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to windingtree...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to windi...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/windingtree/da0af242-6ea8-4fd8-a2ca-8b730d2921a7%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.