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+Title: Initial notes on adding Open311 server API on FixMyStreet
+Tags: english, fiksgatami, open311
+Date: 2011-04-29 09:50
+
+<p>The last few days I have spent some time trying to add support for
+the <ahref="http://www.open311.org/">Open311 API</a> in the
+<a href="http://www.fiksgatami.no/">Norwegian FixMyStreet service</a>.
+Earlier I believed Open311 would be a useful API to use to submit
+reports to the municipalities, but when I noticed that the
+<a href="http://fixmystreet.org.nz/">New Zealand version</a> of
+FixMyStreet had implemented Open311 on the server side, it occurred to
+me that this was a nice way to allow the public, press and
+municipalities to do data mining directly in the FixMyStreet service.
+Thus I went to work implementing the Open311 specification for
+FixMyStreet.  The implementation is not yet ready, but I am starting
+to get a draft limping along.  In the process, I have discovered a few
+issues with the Open311 specification.</p>
+
+<p>One obvious missing feature is the lack of natural language
+handling in the specification.  The specification seem to assume all
+reports will be written in English, and do not provide a way for the
+receiving end to specify which languages are understood there.  To be
+able to use the same client and submit to several Open311 receivers,
+it would be useful to know which language to use when writing reports.
+I believe the specification should be extended to allow the receivers
+of problem reports to specify which language they accept, and the
+submitter to specify which language the report is written in.
+Language of a text can also be automatically guessed using statistical
+methods, but for multi-lingual persons like myself, it is useful to
+know which language to use when writing a problem report.  I suspect
+some lang=nb,nn kind of attribute would solve it.</p>
+
+<p>A key part of the Open311 API is the list of services provided,
+which is similar to the categories used by FixMyStreet.  One issue I
+run into is the need to specify both name and unique identifier for
+each category.  The specification do not state that the identifier
+should be numeric, but all example implementations have used numbers
+here.  In FixMyStreet, there is no number associated with each
+category.  As the specification do not forbid it, I will use the name
+as the unique identifier for now and see how open311 clients handle
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The report format in open311 and the report format in FixMyStreet
+differ in a key part.  FixMyStreet have a title and a description,
+while Open311 only have a description and lack the title.  I'm not
+quite sure how to best handle this yet.  When asking for a FixMyStreet
+report in Open311 format, I just merge title an description into the
+open311 description, but this is not going to work if the open311 API
+should be used for submitting new reports to FixMyStreet.</p>
+
+<p>The search feature in Open311 is missing a way to ask for problems
+near a geographic location.  I believe this is important if one is to
+use Open311 as the query language for mobile units.  The specification
+should be extended to handle this, probably using some new lat=, lon=
+and range= options.</p>
+
+<p>The final challenge I see is that the FixMyStreet code handle
+several administrations in one interface, while the Open311 API seem
+to assume only one administration.  For FixMyStreet, this mean a
+report can be sent to several administrations, and the categories
+available depend on the location of the problem.  Not quite sure how
+to best handle this.  I've noticed
+<a href="http://seeclickfix.com/open311/">SeeClickFix</a> added
+latitude and longitude options to the services request, but it do not
+solve the problem of what to return when no location is specified.
+Will have to investigate this a bit more.</p>
+
+<p>My distaste for web forums have kept me from bringing these issues
+up with the open311 developer group.  I really wish they had a email
+list available via <a href="http://www.gmane.org/">Gmane</a> to use for
+discussions instead of only
+<a href="http://lists.open311.org/groups/discuss">a forum<a/>.  Oh,
+well.  That will probably resolve itself, one way or another.  I've
+also tried visiting the IRC channel #open311 on FreeNode, but no-one
+seem to reply to my questions there.  This make me wonder if I just
+fail to understand how the open311 community work.  It sure do not
+work like the free software project communities I am used to.</p>