ForSaleByLocals Application Programming Interface (API) Overview

Developer Overview of the Platform

The ForSaleByLocals (FSBL) platform is a online multimedia and marketing platform for any type of goods and services. The platform provides a work area to upload, manage, and mix multimedia information of different types and then automatically can syndicate contextually correct information to external websites looking for that type of information.

The API for the FSBL platform either touches or will touch nearly every capability through the base application level that the platform provides.

Platform Engines: The platform is organized into a series of basic functional areas that we internally refer to as "engines". Engines are the fundamental building blocks for all of the platform provided functionality. Each engine is responsible for processing externally provided data, adding its own raw data, or wrapping value added information and/or reporting of content that is contained within or externally referenced by the platform.

The FSBL engines that will be available via the FSBL API include the following:

  • Content Management Engine
  • Geolocation Engine
  • Configuration and Presentation Engine
  • Distribution and Advertising Engine
  • Conversion Engine

These engines are explained in more detail on the FSBL multimedia and marketing plaform's main page. Because the capabilities of these engines are so powerful, some of the features and/or data that the web engines produce may be of interest to outside web developers looking to build or add functionality to their own custom web or console applications.

Platform Functionality: The functionality that the platform provides to perform a discrete task is rarely drawn from a single engine. The platform's logic determines the required mix of inputs and outputs required for a given task as well as manages order and processing for the task's output. Platform functionality is often the result of distrbuted processing across multiple servers.

Base Applications: The base applications are built directly to aggregate a number of related tasks in order to provide large scale user destinations such as social networking sites, geolocated content pages, or video portals. The base apps also can include complex functionality drawing from a number of engines and tasks such as search discoverability.

Higher Order Applications and Features: The platform has features that are more tightly targeting to user requirements above the single task level and within the framework of a base app. Because the FSBL developer APIs reach into the lower levels of these apps/features, it isn't anticipated that APIs will be required for them.

To provide a bit more context, some of the broad areas of the platform that we are currently or planning on providing public facing APIs include the following:

  • Hierarchical Data Storage: Developers will be able to store data into virtual folders as part of a specific base app or "in the cloud" and managed virtually.
  • Contextual Permissions-based Content Management: Developers will be able to easily find contextually relevant personalized content based on such factors as language, context, or geolocation. The developer will also be able to wrap relevant metadata around content regardless of whether it is hosted within the platform as well as control access to content based on user or system determined permissions/access rights.
  • Content Upload and Conversion: Developers will have the ability to upload content in virtual storage and convert the content as needed to meet user needs. This capability includes the ability to convert video to specific video formats based on preset and dynamic inputs to the API

How To Use The API

Calling the Video Conversion API from code is easy. Most programing and scripting languages have some sort of LoadXML function. The URL that you’ll use for the API returns correct XML. The file name for the XML in the LoadXML function will be the API URL. Your XML will be returned almost immediately (after a few basic checks) and the actual video conversion process will occur asynchronously (translation: you wont have to wait for processing to receive your XML back). Below I have some examples of how to call the API from a few selected development languages:

Some of the applications of the API include the following:

  • Real estate
  • Social networking applications