New version of SOTAData enters extended Beta stage

Hi Kjetil,

This sort of thing CAN be made to work - check this little test-page:

https://www.sotamaps.org/xx_search_summits_dropdown.php

When the summits list has been loaded, clicking on it once opens the dropdown list. If you click again, the dropdown list disappears and then you can start typing the summit’s number. When you have typed all three of the numbers (e.g. “242” for LA/RL-242), the correct row in the dropdown will be chosen.

But remember - this is just a test-page…

Cheers, Rob

Yeah, that’s a nice way to do it, but it requires people to know about it. The way I figured to solve it would be be to format the display value as for example “300 - Krokvassnuten” instead of repeating LA/RL- in front for every row, as this info is already selected on the two previous dropdowns. This way you rely on the built-in selection of the browsers to do everything, but you’d probably need to do some slight modifications on how the form handles the data in the dropdown.

Just a little idea to make the process a bit smoother :slight_smile:

Don’t forget that as soon as you make something foolproof Nature invents a better fool :wink:

Hi !
I wanted to upload the log of my first activation i’m made this afternoon and have been surprised not to see any ADIF import function for the SOTAbase…

Reworking a CSV file takes quite some time and ALL logbooks are exporting in ADIF format.

It would be a nice addon (and a good resolution) for 2019 ! :grinning:

73 and HNY, Patrick TK5EP.

Hi Patrick, there are several utilities to convert ADIF format into SOTA CSV format as there are also SOTA logging programs that log directly in SOTA CSV format.

I’m sure you have found SOTAMaps by now? go to it’s Extras page ( Extras - various tools for SOTA purposes - sotamaps.org ) and click on the “Create SOTA CSV” tab and you can enter your ADIF file there and convert it.

73 Ed.

1296.150 MHz loads correctly as 1240 MHz Band. :slightly_smiling_face:

Regards

Andrew VK1AD

Hi Ed,

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
I will test this, but i really think that a direct ADIF import would be easier.

73 and HNY
Patrick TK5EP

Hi Patrick,
as always if you are able to provide programming hours and have the skills to change the interface to add ADIF import to the database, I suggest you contact the management team and offer your services. In SOTA everything is done by volunteers so while we can all have good ideas, getting them implemented is usually the problem. Sometimes the advantages don’t outweigh the work required.

73 Ed.

Hi,

That’s what i already did using the contact form.
I’m not a professionnal programmer, but do have some skills and can probably help…

73, Patrick

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Speaking partly for Andrew here, the reasoning for there being a new database app are as follows.

  • The old app works fine but is built on a now very old framework that is still supported but nobody knows for how much longer.
  • The way the app works makes it very difficult to support single sign on.
  • The menu system doesn’t work well on Android and is difficult to change.

With those thoughts myself and Andrew decided a brand new database app was worth writing. This has been designed to support SSO from the start. As someone said the menus now work on Android and the technologies used are more future-proof. Andrew took the existing code and SQL routines and wrote the new version from them. Along the way a few warts were removed (the need to upload CSV files twice) but the code will behave essentially the same as the old code except it looks different. A more fundamental internal change is the new version supports an API for extracting data. The old application offered the screen displays you saw and the ability to download certain data in CSV files. The new one will allow data to be extracted directly by applications, e.g. “all of MM0FMF’s 2017 chases” or “all of G4OBK’s 2019 activations”, “all the summits in association PY1”.

So this is where we are now. We have a written application that copies all the users features of the old application. It’s been beta tested, now it’s time to given it more testing. There will be bugs and there will be parts that could be improved. Bugs need fixing ASAP. There are places were supporting keys and mouse action are not quite the same on different pages, sometimes filter selections get lost when moving pages. None of these are bugs, they are trivial in the grand scheme, you can use it but sometimes you may need to select CW on a filter on a page and on the next page.

Once we can see how it stands up to more significant use we can work on fixing the bugs and these less important features. Then when that is done, we can look at enhancing the core with things such as ADIF. In the meantime there are plenty of 3rd party solutions available to convert between CSV-v2 and ADIF so that you can move logs between the database and your own logging software. There are logging programs that can output CSV format files directly.

Christophe maintains a webpage that lists many SOTA tools, he also has a number of web based tools at his site: ON6ZQ | www.on6zq.be As Ed pointed out there is an ADIF converter on the Sotamaps page: Extras - various tools for SOTA purposes - sotamaps.org and I know that logging programs Rumlog, Log4OM can directly produce CSV files (there are more but I don’t remember them.)

So this new database application is not complete but is just the start.

If anyone has written any SOTA programs that they make available and they are not listed on Christophe’s page then contact him (details on his pages) so he can add them to the definitive list.

Hi Andy,

as you might aware of, I’m a app developer.
Is there any chance to make use of the https://api-db.sota.org.uk/ API?

Is there any description available? I’m mainly interested on uploading the QSOs.

vy 73, Thomas

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I’ll volunteer to help out. I’ve done a decent amount of XML programming over the last twenty years. ADIF 2.x appears to be an ad hoc SGML-like monstrosity, but 3.x is supposed to be legal XML.

What platform is used for the site? I’m probably most fluent in Python, but I’ve programmed in a lot of languages, even Concurrent Euclid.

A few years ago I wrote a program to compare old and new summit lists and create a CSV showing location, elevation, and name changes. That was used for updates to W3 and W6. I’m glad to contribute that. I should probably port it to Python 3, though.

If someone would send me a link to the beta site, I’d appreciate that.

wunder

Eventually. Not right now while it’s in Beta stage

Try solving the puzzle :slight_smile:

Honestly, the easiest approach is simply to take the existing ADIF2SOTA code and adding it in to the Beta code. Everyone seems to want to reimplement it, but it’s been implemented already about three times. It’s on the list to do, it’s just not a high priority given the abundance of tools that already do just that.

I started that, then decided it meant you didn’t really want beta testers.

wunder

Yep, that’s me, old grumpy-bum sitting around telling people to get off my lawn while I write software and never publish it. It’s lonely here in my hermit cave on my own with nothing but a laptop. Since there’s nothing to do now the kids are off my lawn, I spent all of 5 minutes throwing together a quick one-liner to solve the puzzle:

for i in `wget -q -O- 'http://reflector.sota.org.uk/t/new-version-of-sotadata-enters-extended-beta-stage/19124/1' | grep -A32 "<ol>" | sed 's/<.*>\(.*\)<.*>/\1/'`; do wget -q -O- "https://www.sota.org.uk/Summit/$i" | grep "<title>" | sed  's/.*, \(.*\), .*/\1/'; done

But no, I don’t want beta testers. I just have just spent the last few months ignoring every bit of feedback I’ve gotten. It’s easier that way.

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Hi Andrew,

New sites are looking good. As noted earlier, I found my SSO credentials were surviving an overnight break whereas previously they would time out, presumably being session cookies.

I notice some of the reports do offer mode-selections for results but have the existing defect that they do not really offer a mode based score, rather they select the activaations with at least one contact of the nominated mode. Then the analysis option no longer offers mode-based stats. This may be intentional, if so I need to put my log into a spreadsheet for analysis, rather than the log summary produced by the analysis report. But if not intentional, one to note in the list of queries.

73 Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH

the one liner works a treat, thanks Andrew. It does fail on clues 23 and 25, but those are easy to fill in.
The new sotadata looks great, I’ll do more testing tomorrow.
73 and HNY and thanks for all your work,
Malcolm VE2DDZ

Today I have made available an updated version of VK port-a-log that has only SOTA V2 CSV files for upload to http://sotadata.org.uk/

73
Peter VK3ZPF
http://www.vk3zpf.com

New sotadata page on an ipad 6 showing a duplicated menu options list, different font and rather unusual menu topics. This error was not showing a few days back.