Third Party Development (and a new data dump!)
Third Party Development
One of the things that is fascinating to me about the EVE universe of players is how willing and downright capable many of you are to take matters into your own hands to create tools to enrich everybody's EVE experience. Between the guys at ICSC seeing a need for easy and accurate capital ship jump tools to the people responsible for the Matari Mineral Index and everybody else (EVEMon, the FFET team, ShipFit, the list goes on and on!), there are many EVE players who have taken to building on this community in many great and exciting ways.
Every corporation I've been in has had someone (or multiple someones) who have taken the time to build custom tools. Killboards, ordering systems, production management tools, skill trackers, you name it and it's been done. We've got huge marketing and production conglomerates who have created some really impressive sites, as well.
All of these people (and many others I haven't mentioned!) have done amazing things for this community. I honestly believe that we wouldn't be where we are today without the people who have sacrificed so much time and effort into these kinds of projects. My hat is off to all of you.
Okay, so... what's the point of this blog?
Well, all of the things mentioned above have (for the most part) been done without too much support from CCP. Sure, we've done the data exports, but we've never really done much to support development of any dynamic tools. The in-game browser provides some information when you trust sites, but that's easily faked and still not all that useful, all things considered.
I mentioned in my last blog about the EVE API project that was being worked on to allow people dynamic access to some of our data. Well, that project was successfully deployed with Revelations II and has been going strong ever since. We've had a lot of interest on development using the API and people have really started doing some interesting things.
For those of you interested in getting into development using the API, here are some links you should use:
- API Documentation - what functionality is available and how to access it
- EVE Technology Lab forum - post questions and get help here
- API Keys - get your API keys for using the API
Data Export?! Gimme!
Okay, figured I'd slip this in. I've also taken the time (with t20's help, thanks man!) to put together an updated Revelations 2.0.1 data export. This is mostly a duplicate of the one t20 did back in December, so it's more than likely that any particular flaws his had are still present. I hope you'll forgive me. ;-)
- Official SQL Dump - this is MS SQL formatted, see below for an unofficial MySQL version
- Icons (PNG) - market groups and other graphics classified as icons
- Logos (PNG) - alliance logos in various sizes
- Types (PNG) - modules, ships, etc
A generous player (who has requested anonymity) has also taken the above SQL dump and created a MySQL 5 version suitable for direct import into a MySQL database. This is probably the easiest way to get started for new developers.
As with all of our dumps, we don't provide direct support for using this data. The EVE Technology Lab forum is the official place for getting help and support, many people in the community hang out there and like to pitch in.
End.
The API will be expanding over the coming weeks and months. There's a lot of functionality that we want to see in there that hasn't quite made it yet. Stay tuned!
