[Planetlab-users] Additional anonymous admin API functions

[Mark Huang]

Dear Users,

I have added additional anonymous functions to the PLC API that should 
make it easier to retrieve information about nodes, node groups, and sites:

http://www.planet-lab.org/doc/api/plc_api/specification.php

In particular, it should now be possible to deprecate the use of 
all_hosts.php, beta_hosts.php, etc_hosts.php, etc. in your future 
scripts. For instance (from the Python shell):

# Get a list of beta node structs
import xmlrpclib
api = xmlrpclib.Server('https://www.planet-lab.org/PLCAPI/')
auth = { 'AuthMethod': 'anonymous' }
nodegroups = api.AnonAdmGetNodeGroups(auth)
beta = filter(lambda n: n['name'] == 'Beta', nodegroups)[0]
betanodes = api.AnonAdmGetNodes(auth, api.AnonAdmGetNodeGroupNodes(auth, 
beta['nodegroup_id']))

Doing the same with Frontier in Perl, or curl/grep in bash, I leave as 
an exercise to the reader.

I plan on adding additional anonymous functions, as well as query 
functions, in an attempt to eliminate more of the website's direct use 
of the database.

--Mark