Well route importing is almost complete now.

I have all the code in place to go to CanalPlan AC and pull the information it needs to build the various db entries I need to manage a route and plot it on the page, and to create a set of draft entries for editing.

I’ve also enhanced the Manage Routes page so you have the option of stating if a route is published (and visible) or in draft. This allows you to create a route and then create all the entries for it before publishing the route.

You can now also delete a route (and its associated posts) and change the distance format for each route from your preset default.

All that really remains is the final bit of handshaking with CanalPlan AC.

Well the coding at my end is going well and Nick and I have worked out what we need to do, all I’ve got to do now is understand some of the “oddities” in his table structures where he stores things differently than I expected or the data seems to be inconsistent.

He’s planning to get the code written this weekend so I can basically interrogate the temporary tables created for each route planning session directly on the server. Of course you, the user, will know nothing of this as it should all happen silently in the background. Ha! Ha!

Time for another quick update.

I have skeleton code running which creates a set of draft posts, one for each day of an imported route and creates them with the correct permalinks (with you still being able to edit the final “title” part).

Nick and I have worked out which tables we need to pull data from and how to transfer the data (using JSON structures) and I’ve worked out how to take those files and populate the tables I need.

So now we’re just down to working out the handshaking process. Nick is going to be on the boat for a few days so I’m hoping that we can get something very basic in place at his end so I can do some stuff at my end.

I thought that maybe it was time I updated on how the route importing from CanalPlan AC was going.

The answer is slowly. Some of this is down to me changing my mind on how to do things and some is down to Nick’s work on the new data structures inside Canalplan. He now has new structures for temporarily storing a route which contain the information in just the format I need. Now all we have to do is work out the API and the process flow and we should have that nailed on its head.

Then of course once the data is inside here and the set of draft posts, one for each day of your imported route, have been created we need to be able to allow you to play with it. Now you may be wondering what I mean by that – well Canalplan can only give a best guess at over night stops and your individual days may be shorter or longer than the days that Canalplan creates.

So once a route has been imported, and actually at ANY time, even after you’ve blogged each day you will be able to go in and adjust the endpoint for each day and, if that point is a lock or a lock flight, you will also be able to adjust the number of locks for that day.

So that’s the ideas that have been bouncing round in my head and I hope to be able to work on some of the processes with Nick when we are boating next week