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Originally Posted by Xaphod
a few questions..
the API says -
"ENGLAND - The current English population on this server; either 0 (Light), 1 (Moderate), 2 (Heavy), or 3 (Very Heavy)"
So am I right in thinking this is NOT the same as the text shown in the server select screen, because that shows the WEEKLY MAX population of that faction not the CURRENT population. If it does show the same weekly max population then this data is much less useful and really you'd only need to update the cache when things do change.
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It is currently not the same as the values shown in the client, though the intention is to change it to that value eventually, I think. Brendan and I are going to be figuring that out in the coming days. It's possible (though don't take this as a promise) that we'll end up providing both (an immediate snapshot and a rolling weekly "high tide").
If that's something you'd like to see, be sure to let us know.
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The API states that the population figures are optional and shows an example where only england is shown. In what circumstances would the query only return a single nation, and what would the default for the other nations be in that circumstance?
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It'd not show the optional parameters in the rare case that nation has never had a character on that server. For most purposes, you can assume that case simply won't ever exist, though handling it is pretty straightforward.
There wouldn't be a default value in that case -- it'd simply indicate that nation doesn't have a horse in the race yet.
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"The port state XML contains <PortList> element, which in turn contains zero or more <Port> elements. The port elements detail information about a port on that server, including PvP state, server victory state, its location in the world, and so on."
This reads a little oddly. Surely in all circumstances this would be a list of ALL the ports in game? If not, when would it return less than that, and when should we expect it to contain zero ports?
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Like the above, in real-world situations, you'd never see anything less than "everything", but in certain circumstances in test servers, we might see less internally. Keeping to one standard for data exchange ensures we have a lot fewer problems (not having to write code twice to do essentially the same thing means there's half the number of bugs!).
That said, most good XML libraries will handle "zero or more" child elements just as well as "1 or more", so there should be little to no
practical difference between the two.