FAI data

Examples of FAI data API

Very simple example of the sort of data FAI could make available for people to use in their applications.
Select items below to include that data in the resulting RESTful XML data output, then press get XML.
In MSIE the data should be displayed as XML, in Firefox you may have to look at the page source to see the XML data structure.
To return to this page, simply press the back button.

After you have pressed the button you can see the requested parameters in the URL.
This URL can be used from anywhere to retrieve this data.

General stuff
List of FAI members (not guaranteed to be correct)
List of CIMA classes
List of CIMA delegates

Microlight & Paramotor records
WL1T - Weight-shift Control / Landplane / Flown solo / Thermal engine
WL2T - Weight-shift Control / Landplane / Flown with two persons / Thermal engine
AL1T - Movable Aerodynamic Control / Landplane / Flown solo / Thermal engine
AL2T - Movable Aerodynamic Control / Landplane / Flown with two persons / Thermal engine
PF1Tm - Paraglider Control / Foot-launched / Flown solo / Thermal engine / male
PF2T - Paraglider Control / Foot-launched / Flown with two persons / Thermal engine

More from this API
The key to this API is what is in the URL after the ?
the examples above are just a small subset of what is available from an API like this,
for example records for all microlight and paramotor classes are available, eg
?data=cima.records.PL1E will get you class PL1E.

This API is also set up to get other subsets, for example
?data=cima.records.P will get you all records in the paramotor classes
or
?data=cima.records.1E will get you all records in electric classes flown solo
or you could get two or more datasets together by concantenating them together with ampersands: &
?data=cima.records.WL1&data=cima.records.PL1E

You can do the same with the class list, as in
?data=cima.classes.P
and
?data=cima.classes.1E

Or with the keyword "all" you can get the lot, as in:
?data=cima.classes.all
and
?data=cima.records.all
In this latter case it is quite a big data set which might take a bit of processing, hence the options above are probably more useful most of the time.

Members
With FAI members This API supports subsets by region, so
?data=members.europe will get European FAI members
Note that in all cases the URL must be properly encoded, so the url for South America, which has a space in it, is:
?data=members.south%20america

CIMA Delegates
As with FAI members, This API supports subsets by region, so
?data=cima.delegates.europe will get European CIMA Delegates

Summary
The purpose of the above is simply to show the possibilities of the sort of data FAI should be making available.
Several things will be noticed:

• No secure data, eg email addresses is exposed. For this sort of thing a level of permissions is required.
• There can however be a lot more info, eg NAC names Etc which is not contained in this demo database.
• The objective of an API like this is data supply. It is not necessary for it to be able to deliver the name of the NAC under which a World record was ratified, but it is necessary for it to deliver sufficient data that this could be determined from further processing. In this case the <fai_nation/>
  field would be used to join the two data sets.
• All data is encapsulated in a single <fai></fai>
  structure. While the whole purpose of this sort of thing is that it should be extensible, it would be very wise for FAI to create a basic structure which deals with the core data elements.