#58 Haystack 2.0 Docs Posted

Brian Frank Mon 1 Oct 2012

I've upgrade the site with a batch of new documentation.

REST API

A couple of us have spent the last few weeks ironing out all sorts of issues to build out a proposed REST API with real working code. Now that we have lots of stuff actually working, its time to get broader feedback. So I've gone ahead and merged all the documentation from the Java Haystack Toolkit into this site per topic 57. This brings a bunch of great work all under the umbrella of this site.

The new docs include a bunch of new chapters:

  • /doc/Grids: two-dimensional tabular representation of haystack tagged data
  • /doc/Zinc: simple plain text format for grids (this a modified, open sourced implementation of a format we originally created for SkySpark)
  • /doc/Csv: comma separated representation for Haystack data
  • /doc/Rest: brand new HTTP API for exchange of Haystack tagged data
  • /doc/Ops: a standardized set of HTTP operations for clients to use for server communication including a oBIX inspired watch mechanism

If you have an interest in the REST API, take a look at the new docs and provide your feedback. Depending on level of feedback, I'd like to do another round of iteration on the spec in next few weeks.

I also didn't do anything with XML or JSON encoding of data yet. All the infrastructure is there to plug it into via HTTP content negotiation. But figured we'd get basics locked down, then we can propose how to do JSON.

One other big thing I left open is authentication. That is something we need brainstorm on best way to do since many REST APIs sort of handle it as a one-off today.

Java Haystack Toolkit

I've taken the original Java code and spent a great deal of time enhancing it to include:

  • Grid support
  • Zinc and CSV support
  • Pluggable formats and content negotiation
  • Standardized and pluggable operations
  • Fully featured client API
  • Server stubs and full client support for watches

The toolkit provides a great reference implementation for developers and is fully opened source on Bitbucket. There is already some great work in community on integrating my latest code into a Niagara implementation.

Misc Changes

This is the first upgrade in docs I've done in a while, so couple of resolved enhancements have been added to docs:

  • New units: kBTU/ft², MBTU/ft², kBTU/h/ft², W/cfm, kW/kcfm, kW/gal/min, knot
  • 48: VAV entering tag
  • 49: added AHU bypass damper cmd
  • Add meter diagram to /doc/Energy chapter
  • Fixed /doc/Chillers diagram to use proper terminology

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