Obtaining user's rank

[Mef]

And is not only being too slow for being used in a webpage, also I really don't like the idea of being constantly crawling the KGS archives, it may affect the performance of the server .

As far as I know, the server that runs kgs and the server that hosts the web archive are separate entities. That said, I do know that there is a delay required if you're going to crawl the website, otherwise it will lock you out after a certain number of archive page requests in too short a timespan. This is to presumably prevent scripts from affecting the performance of the website server.

[ez4u]

What kind of site are you planning that will be visited mainly by KGS players where you would not request/trust their self-reported rank but will request, receive, and then trust their self-reported username?

Is not about the trust in the user, is about having the rank always up-to-date without being a pain in the ass to the user, that way the content can change smoothly with the learning pace.
...

To me you seem to have your priorities backwards. You have (are building) a website with content that your users will enter and progress through ("learning"). Yet instead of basing the offered material on their performance on your website, you seem to want to alter what you offer based on their rating on KGS, an unrelated site. If you did this to me, I would be upset! If I choose to come to your site and work through the items available, why would I want to suddenly skip to another level just because I beat tartrate or some other KGS clown? I don't get it.

[Ellyster]

What kind of site are you planning that will be visited mainly by KGS players where you would not request/trust their self-reported rank but will request, receive, and then trust their self-reported username?

Is not about the trust in the user, is about having the rank always up-to-date without being a pain in the ass to the user, that way the content can change smoothly with the learning pace.
...

To me you seem to have your priorities backwards. You have (are building) a website with content that your users will enter and progress through ("learning"). Yet instead of basing the offered material on their performance on your website, you seem to want to alter what you offer based on their rating on KGS, an unrelated site. If you did this to me, I would be upset! If I choose to come to your site and work through the items available, why would I want to suddenly skip to another level just because I beat tartrate or some other KGS clown? I don't get it.

The users will not enter any content, absolutely all the contents are provided by (mostly Japanese) professional players. The user's KGS rank will be used to position better (and make suggestions about) the material that we judge more adequate for their specific level. Any user can access to all the content without level restrictions.

From my point of view the best way of truly measuring learning progress in Go is through played games, where you can apply the techniques that you learn... and KGS rank is as good as any other, that's where it comes into place (also since part of the teaching will probably be offer there).

[anazawa]

You can try unofficial JSON API for KGS Go Server, MetaKGS (http://metakgs.org/docs).
I believe you can GET /api/archives/:user which contains the user's latest rank.

Note: MetaKGS is in beta state, and so the APIs may change without notice.

[Ellyster]

You can try unofficial JSON API for KGS Go Server, MetaKGS (http://metakgs.org/docs).
I believe you can GET /api/archives/:user which contains the user's latest rank.

Note: MetaKGS is in beta state, and so the APIs may change without notice.

Wow! It's a great project.

Sadly GET /api/archives/:user do not include the user's latest rank (will be an awesome feature improvement, maybe even I try to do a pull request when I get some free time ).


Right now, I will need to do GET /api/archives/:user, then GET prev, and then go to content -> games -> first game -> white (and black) -> check players' names and ranks. Is a little bit long, but still the better way to do it so far.

[anazawa]

You can try unofficial JSON API for KGS Go Server, MetaKGS (http://metakgs.org/docs).
I believe you can GET /api/archives/:user which contains the user's latest rank.

Note: MetaKGS is in beta state, and so the APIs may change without notice.

Wow! It's a great project.

Sadly GET /api/archives/:user do not include the user's latest rank (will be an awesome feature improvement, maybe even I try to do a pull request when I get some free time ).


Right now, I will need to do GET /api/archives/:user, then GET prev, and then go to content -> games -> first game -> white (and black) -> check players' names and ranks. Is a little bit long, but still the better way to do it so far.

Thanks for your suggestion and opening the first issue on MetaKGS.org!
As I replied in the issue, https://github.com/anazawa/metakgs.org/issues/1, I think as follows:

B) Write a MetaKGS client using your favorite language and then implement the object method #get_latest_rank_by_name (my recommendation). You have already understood
how to get the user's latest rank using MetaKGS APIs, and so it will be easy for you.
I can also introduce your client on MetaKGS.org.