Discussion Improving my coding knowledge - Which API to use?

[BishopMontanha]

So I'm a fledging CMDR who wishes to learn more about coding and so I thought, "Elite Dangerous sounds like a good interesting way to learn". So my questions (sorry if basic) is this.

1) From what I've read, there is no API that connects directly with Elite Dangerous to poll data - Is that a correct assumption.

2) Is there a generic API that I can use - Do I use the Inara API or EDDN - Elite Dangerous Data Network API.

3) Is there any central source of documentation.

My overall plan is to create a dashboard that contains CMDR profile, trade prices around the system that you're currently in. If a member of a squadron, where they are. FC - List of Fleet carriers that you can specify, and some BGS information. Not looking to change the world, just improve my knowledge.

I'm quite new and thus the silly questions. Thanks in advance.

 

[Lombra]

There are two methods in particular you can use in order to get data out of the game.

The first method is the companion app API. I don't really know much about it, but you should be able to figure stuff out by searching for it. I think it's been reverse engineered from the Elite Dangerous companion app? As far as I know there exists no official documentation for it. I believe this is what everyone used before the player journal was added, which brings me to...

The second method is using the player journal, which is simply a bunch of text files to which the game outputs game data in JSON. The main feature is the actual journal, which gives you data in the shape of game events. For example, when you travel to a system, you receive an event containing data on the system in question, when you dock in a station, you get info on the station's commodities, etc. There are also some files which represent the state of a few objects, eg your cargo and modules.

The journal has official documentation, which can be found at the top of this forum in PDF and .doc formats, or you can check out the link in my signature, which is simply a web version of it!

 

[BishopMontanha]

Thanks very much, I'll explore both avenues and see what I can do with the API + Blazor.

 

[xpedros]

As for processing journal log data, I recently started writing a small C++ project called EDDIE. I use a library of functions for JSON took from the JSON for Modern C++ by Niels Lohmann (json.hpp).