V1 'Projector' APIs -> V2 (what's missing)

[MooPaw]

Detailed Description of the Problem/Question

Hi - I'm working on a 'resurrection' of Projector (using V2 API) and have encountered (so far) the following gaps that V2 does not seem to support (yet).

1) Layouts: V1 custom layouts appear in V2, but have no data associated 2) Custom Slides: again, there are hints in V2 that custom slides exist, but no data from V1 3) Section (Stanza) parsing of lyric/chords data: the V1 'include_slides' seems to provide some platform-supplied parsing into Section data - but no such support is in V2: (Update: I now see the 'sections' include option for attachment query - so looks like I'm set on this one :)

So - this issue is mostly "what is going to be ported to V2" and "do I need to roll my own solutions" (private cloud + PCO V2) to support?

Thanks; Butch

Steps to reproduce:

Basically - try getting 'all the stuff that Projector gets now in V1', but using V2 (hence, the 3 questions above)

API endpoint I'm using:

V2 APIs / versus Charles Proxy snooping on what existing Projector / V1 is doing

Programming language I'm using:

ObjC

Authentication method I'm using:

OAuth2 (snooping) - not doing active API calls in my app yet (hard coding data for testing)

[apstew]

Hi there! First I wanted to make sure you know we've seen this message. We're still discussing it, but right now here's what we're thinking.

1. Layouts will not exist in V2. Layouts contain a lot of style information and I could see how 3rd party apps might want to do their own things here. Since layouts are an Organization wide setting, it seems like something that could exist just in a local copy of an app, or by using a private cloud solution.
2. Custom Slides will exist. Since these are attached to specific plan items, it seems like requiring a 3rd party app to come up with their own solution for this doesn't make as much sense as making it available in the API. The reason this is a little tricky is we probably will not include this data in our own UI when we start to redo our plans page at the end of this year. There are very few things available in our API that aren't available in the UI, but it still feels like we might need to do this anyway.

We're going to be talking about this more tomorrow, so I'll keep you informed. Feel free to let me know any other thoughts you have. Thanks! - Aaron

[MooPaw]

Thanks for the thoughts, Aaron. I agree that Layouts is pretty specific to 'what an app wants to do for presentation' so I'll just plan to support that internally (perhaps read V1 / write private cloud to keep existing customer's custom layout data) as Projector Jr. makes its way into the world.

I'll await 'the plan' for Custom Slides (re: V2 API support) - and perhaps will just continue to use V1 to at least read existing Custom Slides data (but perhaps not allow in-app editing till V2 is all ready) - then finally move all to V2 once the API is implemented. Since Projector Sr. would have been the only 'first party' consumer of the feature, I do see how it makes sense for y'all to drop it from your 'new' UI - as Music Stand really does not have anything useful to display for them. Maybe you could also ask other PCO 'presentation' partners to see if they might want to (continue to) consume Custom Slides to help guide your plan.

Thanks; Butch

[ghjpk]

Hi, apstew, I'm building a Planning Center to OpenLP integration plugin, and I am also looking for the slides content in the V2 API.

On the topic of visibility in the UI, if the custom slides were no longer editable in the plans UI, it would no longer be meaningful (for me) to have it in the API. My basic premise is that Planning Center is the central repository of slide content (song lyrics plus basic slide content) and if you can no longer edit the slides in PCO, this breaks down. I'm not looking for additional functionality in the slides than what is offered today.

[MooPaw]

Hi @ghjpk - 're-referencing' your above comment with @apstew (not sure if he gets notified if you don't reference with the '@' nomenclature)

[apstew]

Hi @ghjpk Thanks for the comment. I understand where you're coming from, but unfortunately I don't think we'll be exposing the custom slides UI when we update the plans page. Our plans page is already very complicated and part of our goal is to find ways to simplify some of the less common things so we can make room to add features that will benefit everyone. Since we no longer plan to do anything with the custom slides within Planning Center, it doesn't make as much sense for us to expose it, I'm afraid. For now you should probably assume that by sometime in 2019 custom slide data won't be visible in the UI. Sorry about that.

[tannermares]

@BionicButchie I just deployed some CustomSlide endpoints for you 😊 . You'll now see custom_slides in the links object of a plan_item. You can add remove and edit anything on a custom slide as long as you are an editor for that plan. Anyone can view the slides. If you see anything that needs fixing let us know in a new issue.