Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
as Michael Young's work highlights (Table 4.1, map no. 12),
the information published online in RSS format can be
acquired by data scraping rather than through an RSS flux
reader.
4.1.3.3.
APIs
APIs are central to what has been previously described as
the Web of platform: they provide and connect online data.
For instance the application “Egypt Hypercities” (Table 4.1,
map no. 9) localizes and stores the messages from Twitter
containing the hashtags #Egypt or #jan25. As explained by
the project's Web designers:
The project works by using Twitter's search API,
requesting tweets within a few miles of the center
of Cairo or which contain hashtags like #Egypt or
#Jan25. While they are shown live on the map,
another
program
downloads
these
from
the
Internet and puts them into a database.
17
David
Shepard, blogpost, February 13, 2011
The data provision for the map is automatic, whether
through the Twitter database in the case of instant messages
or through the designers' own database for archived
messages, the interchange between the map and the data list
is not modified by the application designers.
So the provision of data to a Web map can be a static
process, such as when selected online data are added or
created by the author, or when it comes from large online
datasets (open data, “raw data”); it can also be entered by
Web users, following the modalities set by the map designer.
Finally, the data can be supplied dynamically through Web
scraping
,
RSS feeds or API.
17 See: http://hastac.org/blogs/david-shepard/hypercities-egypt.
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