API

For developers who want to integrate doingText with their own web service or desktop product we provide a REST API.

In order to use the API you need a doingText account. For authentication please provide your doingText login/password using HTTP BASIC authentication for all API requests.

For now the API supports the following features:

• View a user's list of discussions
• View a single discussion including comments
• Create a new discussion

View a user's list of discussions

To view the list of discussions issue a GET request to the URL http://doingtext.com/profile.xml providing your user credentials via BASIC authentication. You will get back an XML document describing your discussions:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <discussions>
    <discussion>
      <created-at>2009-03-31T15:49:08+02:00</created-at>
      <permalink>sntzsv</permalink>
      <published>false</published>
      <title>my test discussion</title>
      <updated-at>2009-03-31T15:49:08+02:00</updated-at>
    </discussion>
  </discussions>

View a single discussion including comments

To view a single discussion issue a GET request to the URL http://doingtext.com/discussions/PERMALINK.xml where PERMALINK is the permalink of the discussion which you can extract from the list of discussions. The resulting XML document will look like this:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <discussion>
      <created_at>Tue Mar 31 15:53:44 +0200 2009</created_at>
      <updated_at>Tue Mar 31 15:54:12 +0200 2009</updated_at>
      <permalink>rfsrrm</permalink>
      <title>test discussion</title>
      <lines>
        <line>
          <color></color>
          <content><![CDATA[ test discussion]]></content>
          <position>1</position>
          <created_at>Tue Mar 31 15:53:44 +0200 2009</created_at>
          <updated_at>Tue Mar 31 15:53:44 +0200 2009</updated_at>
          <version>1</version>
          <user_name></user_name>
          <comments>
            <comment>
              <created_at>Tue Mar 31 15:54:12 +0200 2009</created_at>
              <updated_at>Tue Mar 31 15:54:12 +0200 2009</updated_at>
              <line_update>false</line_update>
              <content><![CDATA[ test comment]]></content>
              <user_name>alex</user_name>
            </comment>
          </comments>
        </line>
      </lines>
    </discussion>

Create a new discussion

To create a discussion issue a POST request to the url http://doingtext.com/discussions.xml. The HTTP payload should include the following parameters:

• discussion[title] - optional. if you don't provide one the title will be extracted from the first line of the content.
• discussion[permalink] - optional. if you don't pass one in a unique permalink will be generated for you.
• discussion[content] - required. the contents of your discussion, each line separated by a line break (\n)

An example POST body could look like this:

  discussion[title]=my+discussion&discussion[permalink]=my-discussion \
    &discussion[content]=line+one