Progress on the API is moving so much faster than I originally anticipated. I’ve been working on it night and day, trying to get to a point where clients can actually do something useful with it. But, I’m not the only one who’s been busy!
mage-hand, Rubygem for the API
Ruby hacker shammond42 (@shammond42 on Twitter) has already created a Rubygem wrapper for the API, making it much simpler to interface with from your Ruby or Rails application. For any other Ruby hackers out there, take a look at mage-hand and make sure to follow it on github. Or, if you’re not a Ruby hacker but prefer PHP, .NET, or something else, you might like the next part:
Write a library, get a lifetime Ascendant Membership
I was going to wait on this until the API was a little more stable, but since it’s progressing so fast, I’ll go ahead and tip my hand. Any developer who writes and maintains an open source library that wraps the API gets my eternal thanks and a lifetime Ascendant Membership. I need to formalize it a little more, but here are the basic guidelines:
- Offer only applies to the first (decent) library in a particular language. I don’t want 30 half-done-then-abandoned libraries for a particular language. Instead, I want one good one. If a library already exists, help out the author and we’ll find a way to reward you. Collaboration FTW!
- The library must be open sourced and easily available (github, sourceforge, whatever).
- Lifetime membership applies for as long as you’re willing to maintain the library, fixing bugs and keeping it up to date with API changes.
- If you get sick of maintaining the library, that’s fine. Just help us find someone to take it over for you. We’ll give you 1 year free Ascendant time from the date you hand it off, and the new maintainer gets set up with the lifetime sub.
Once again, I have to warn that the API is still very unstable at this point. We’re changing names, fields, URLs, and everything at a rapid pace. We want to get everything right, and that means making and then unmaking mistakes. But, if you’re willing to deal with some flux and instability, we’d love to see some more language-specific libraries!
