The pMetrics API is finally here. We think you’ll like it. Nearly every piece of information you can see from the web interface can also be accessed via the API, and you can get it in XML, JSON (JavaScript), or serialized PHP formats for easy implementation in a variety of applications.
We’d really like to see some awesome widgets created by anyone who has the ability! The API should allow that fairly easily. The plan is to have a page listing all the widgets created ‘officially’ by us as well as community contributed ones, and anyone will be able to grab them to place on their own site, or use one our upcoming fully customizable dashboard.
Let’s see some creativity, people!
13 thoughts on “The pMetrics API has landed”
Check out the new pMetrics plugin:
http://performancing.com/revolutionary-pmetrics-wordpress-plugin-released
Ah well, the Fetch Data module in Pipes doesn’t work on PMetrics API’s XML output. I’m going to have to use serialize.
Yahoo Pipes now has a new “Fetch Data” module that will parse any XML and do its best to produce data. So I’m going to start with a few PMetrics Pipes and move towards PMetrics WP (WordPress) plugins.
Maurizio,
Your widget doesn’t cut my “fun and useful” criteria. Plus it could use some polishing on the level of design.
I posted my wordpress widget! 🙂
Where’s the money?
If I create two widgets I get two prizes? 🙂
Sean, I noticed some inconsistencies in the visitor-list query.
For example, I ran one API query from May 1st to 30th using no ip_address filter. There was only one record for my IP addr in the results, and it was dated May 30th.
Then I ran the same API query but specified my IP addr. This time, I ended up with 29 results for me spanning the month.
However, the real problem is that there’s simply too much data/ too many visitors in that time span that not all the records will show up even when the limit is set to 500. So how can I access all that other data? Even if I end up make 30 separate queries (30 days in May) if the site in question has a ton of traffic? There doesn’t seem to be a programmatic way to grab all data.
Ryan, you should make a post about that ($100 offer), buried in the comments won’t get nearly as much notice. We’re holding our own contest as well.
Ryan, unfortunately no. Pipes accepts Atom and several forms of RSS. That said, the PMetrics API’s XML can very easily be wrapped with suitable RSS tags. If a “format” parameter was added, with default as it is now but a “format=rss”, then Pipes will pick it up.
It’s not a problem though. Somewhere lurking on my old computer is an XML parser I wrote in PHP. If I can find it, it’ll be easy to tweak. I can either write a PHP script to convert the current format to RSS, or build on it to create a few WordPress plugins.
What I’m really hoping to do is build WP plugins that use the Sparklines plugin code to display neat little graphics showing people’s blog metrics in a single panel. So I don’t really need to use Pipes. I just like to use it to explore some rapid prototyping before coding.
$100 each to the first 5 Widgets that I determine “fun”
Raj,
RSS is a type of XML. Can’t Pipes take any form of XML feed?
Well, it’s not in RSS format because it’s not really RSS type data. RSS is XML but not vice versa. RSS typically just delivers the “latest” data with no options, whereas the API lets you choose the data you want and what date range. RSS also has restrictions on valid tags, whereas ‘standard’ XML you can use whatever names you want, which also helps to self-document what everything means. I haven’t played with Yahoo pipes but it seems silly that you couldn’t feed it plain old XML.
Looks like we’ll need to have a pMetrics widget contest. Great job Sean.
Very cool. Waiting for this excitedly. Unfortunately, the XML is not in RSS format, so I can’t access the API through Yahoo Pipes. Bummer. I was planning on a bunch of Pipes-based tools, but I’ll see what I can come up with in terms of WordPress plugins.
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