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uWaterloo / OpenData

Help and Support for University of Waterloo Open Data Initiative
https://api.uwaterloo.ca
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Endpoint for term start and end dates #139

Closed ahmedalsudani closed 6 years ago

ahmedalsudani commented 10 years ago

Currently, there doesn't seem to be a way to find out when classes start and when they end through the API. I've had to create a list of terms for my app using the Important Dates page.

It would be nice if there was an endpoint somewhere under /terms/ that returned those dates.

P.S.

courses/{class_number}/schedule would make this unnecessary for me if it returned classes[0]['start_date'] that is not null.

nathanv commented 10 years ago

Hello @ahmedalsudani . We are currently in the process of working on this exact problem. Given the importance of the information and having it accurate as possible, we are extending the QA process. What is the use of the app and where will be downloadable? @cpbtklogic

ahmedalsudani commented 10 years ago

@nathanv it won't really be downloadable. It's an API that takes a list of courses and returns an ICS calendar that can be imported into Google Calendar or iCal.

Here's the code if you want to take a look. I plan on creating a front-end sometime that would make it easier for people to use, but having to deal with dates myself is painful, so I'd rather have it resolved before I start sending my friends links.

For my use case, it would be great to have one endpiont that tells me when lectures start, when they end, and what dates in-between are holidays.

nathanv commented 10 years ago

@ahmedalsudani Thank you for letting us know about the use of the data. As I mentioned we’ve been working on this exact endpoint that you want. We've been having some cases where the data errs for a limited time. Given the importance of the data, we can’t really afford such issues at all on production. We're looking into ways of releasing such data sets in a different way not unlike how chrome has a dev channel. Stay tuned. I'll make sure to update this issue when we've move on this issue.

jacktruong commented 10 years ago

I, too, would request an Important Dates feed. The digital signage we have in Engineering has a box that shows when our computing help desk is open. It currently does a dumb "Monday-Friday 9 to 4" check. We have reduced hours during exams and we are sometimes closed (after exams and before classes start up; stat holidays). Currently we manually change it but a data feed would be much nicer.

ahmedalsudani commented 9 years ago

Hi @nathanv,

Any updates? If you have an equivalent of a "canary" version now, I would love to be testing it!