The ChinesePod Third Party API is coming...

Hi John. I'm not sure what you are asking for. Are you looking for suggestions from someone who would potentially write a program like WLCP, or are you guys at CP going to write it and want to know what the subscribers want?

The makers of WLCP have employed clever but crude ways of gathering the data from ChinesePod lessons. It's because of these methods that ChinesePod cannot change code on the site without (unintentionally) breaking WLCP. Until now, however, there was no other way for WLCP to gather its data.

If WLCP gathered its data through an API, no changed on the ChinesePod site would affect the stability of WLCP, as long as the API itself remained stable.

So, in answer to your question, it's the former.

ChinesePod is already releasing new programs that do some of the things that WLCP does, but so far they've been released only as mobile apps, and their functionality is rather basic.

Unfortunately I think all the programers that worked on wlcp have packed up their bags and gone home. The api in this case is probably a case of too little too late. It would be nice if someone picked this up though. cpod could help by providing a way to download the expansion sentence mp3's bundled together, and a way to print them with hanzi, english, and pinyin included. Perhaps add the expansion sentences to the pdf?

Well, I guess it shouldn't be too much of a problem to provide an additional "Premium Content PDF", as there already is a mechanism to block basic users from accessing premium content.

I don't have a background in designing or using web APIs, but as long as it allowed for:

1. Obtaining lists of lessons

2. Get sentences and associated audio from lessons with the same structure as is present in XML.

II personally wouldn't care so much about the details, since I would definitely access the API via a Python wrapper anyway.

Andrew_c--does this mean that you could make us a wlcp for us now? That interface made so much more sense to me than the standard online Web access. Oh, please. And thank you.

Yes Andrew,

I second sfrr's plea. WLCP is broken now and the API is only a cpod "coming soon" promise at this point. If nobody "owns" the WLCP program, even an API will not help. How nice it would be to have it fixed (one more time), so we have something to use in the interim. We can then hope that someone will re-write the WLCP program and capture all its functionality using the API. My preference would be that cpod adds a few tid-bits to their list of available funtions, so we wouldnt need WLCP. They have made some of these changes already and "We Love Chinese Pod" after all.

Thank you John for clarifying. If those [PC] expansion sentences ever do get on the pdf (for me, I go for the html version so I can copy/paste and resize for my bad eyes and my flash cards) it would be great to have pinyin along with them.

The reason for my wanting pinyin, and perhaps I represent the needs of others as well, is that I am not in a Mandarin environment and I do need to "read" that pinyin, slowly, emphasizing and exaggerating the tones, to keep my fa1yin1 sharp and to continually reinforce the tones in my old brain. Stretching the topic here a bit, most Mandarin speakers tell me to "forget the pinyin" after a week, like they do in ABC school...well, that doesn't work in my situation. Keep it accurate, keep it sharp. I'm not talking about a shoe, I meant snow...or was it blood? ;)

I agree with RJ. My studying has suffered without the use of WLCP. IT was truly very helpful.

As a Linux user and programming hobbiest I would love to see the API. I agree that the way that WLCP worked by parsing the website content is crude and brittle to any changes that Chinese POD made to the site. I am looking forward to any API that might be released, even at an Alpa stage with the warning that "This might change and break things". Making changes to code that is parsing well structured data is much cleaner.  I have a few Ideas that I would love to play around with if I had some kind of API to work with. I'm guessing something does exist because of the mobile aps but you guys don't think it's ready for prime time. I understand. I'm just beging for a sneek peak to play with. I promise to not complain when you change something and break my ap. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) :)