With the advent of Jeff’s re-working of the ORUK validator to be more flexible and suitable for multiple audiences, we’ve started discussion about what it looks like to have a hosted instance of the validator for the community.
It’d be good to get some ideas on what people’s needs are.
As far as I can see, there are two initial dimensions to understand (although please contribute additional things!!!)
- How adhoc vs how systematic would you be wanting to use a hosted validator? (as opposed to hosting your own instance)
- Are people wanting a web frontend for a hosted validator or are you happier interacting with its API? (the ORUK validator currently is back-end only, with a “bring your own front-end” approach.)
So here are my questions to the community; but again, if you think there’s something else to say about this topic then say it! These questions are just a starting point.
This obviously has links to some things we’ve covered in the User Stories around validation. This thread will be used to refine or add to the user stories, but since we’re discussing the possibility of a specific instance of a hosted community validator, we’re mostly focusing on this.
Q1: By what interface/mechanism are you likely to use the validator.
e.g.
- “I’ll send my data directly to the API on an adhoc basis via something
like cURL and analyse/display the results myself on my server/computer” - “I want a web interface to input my API endpoint details, and to
display results to support debugging” - “I want to use the hosted validator as part of my production pipeline,
so I will be systematically making calls to its API via a software library”
etc.
Q2: If you want a web front-end, do you have specific needs for the
interface?
- “There must be a clear way to input security details to access my API
data” - “I just want to put my root URL in a text box and hit a button and
then get my results”
etc.
Misc
If you’re planning on interacting with the API of the hosted validator programmatically, it’d be good to have some more details about this. What languages or environments are important? Do you prefer to use existing frameworks to do this, or would you like to see something that abstracts that away.
e.g. a Python developer might plan to take data from their Django web application and transform it into HSDS, and therefore might envision checking it with the validator at some point in its lifecycle. They might prefer to use the hosted validator with the popular requests library by just plugging in its details, or they might want an “official” library that handles taking data and passing it to the hosted intance of the validator and passing out the results; so they don’t need to manage access themselves.