Minimalistic (REST ?) API for interfacing (to Python , ...)

[breznak]

Suggested parts of the API:

• init() graph (start the application, not necessary, we can open the browser manually)
• updateData(newBatch)

What are the right methods to interfacing JS calls?

• a REST API?

Use-case:

• I'd like to interface our graph from other language (python). My example usecase is running a HTM model:

htm = NuPIC.init()
graph = ... //open browser or somehow start the app

for ... :
  result = htm.compute(input)
  graph.updateData(result) // append new data

The API idea follows from my comment #40 (comment)

It could overcome the problem with polling updates to a file (impossible by Papa) while step updates are possible in DyGraphs, this could replace #17

[breznak]

CC @rhyolight would this work for you?
This python-to-JS must be something you have to solve in your "htm.smartthings..." repo, can you show me what the best approach to interfacing would be? (the REST,...)
@jefffohl This is another approach to #27 - if we could implement the graph.updateOptions() as you seggested to update with new data, then this could work (?) And potentially giving better functionality.
Or ideally both - API updates and updated-file polling.

[rhyolight]

I think that the charting codebase here in this repo should be a client-only API for in-browser charting (like Dygraphs). If you want to create a server for relaying data into the charts, it would like be specific to one kind of data or another. I suggest that (the server-side work) be done in other projects and keep this repo client-only.

[breznak]

@rhyolight I disagree a bit here. Maybe we could discuss what each of us wants from the repo somewhere? I have a "tool for insight, exploring, presenting (anomaly) (time-series) data" in mind.
Anyway, maybe this issue should not say an API but a "method to add additional data" to an existing graph, grammatically. I've suggested that for the #17 - streaming data plotting - which I think is a feature that differentiates us from other tools.