Roots Archives Forum

I have written a android app for Mobile Phones that allows you to browse all the music in Discogs database. The app also has a database so you can build up your own record collection on your phone, data entry is either by scanning in a bar code or entering the Catalog id or artist/title etc.

I'm a big reggae fan with 600+ albums and I fear when I come to entering my reggae collection I'm not going to find many matches on Discogs. Roots Archive has the biggest and best archive and I would love to be able to use its data in a similar manner. I'm guessing from the URLs used to access its content that the database engine is very similar to Discogs - any chance we could ever get Roots Archive to link up with Discogs?

Regards

PonderGuy/Discoid/JahSavage

Hey ponderguy,
don't expect too much. Seems like the makers of this site don't have enough (free-)time anymore, the last update was in December 2008. It's a pity (though understandable) but i think nothing will happen here in the near future. If I'm right, their planned "Funk & Soul Archive" wasn't released either.
Hope RA will be around for a long time and if only for the forum, but when it comes to album-information the future lies with discogs and its user-built database.
Bless, Nilo

Been thinking of programming a Roots-Archives app for iPhone. Been looking in to it and realised it shouldn't be too difficult.

To kalcidis

The problem with processing html is its inconsistency, anyway good luck all the same.

As regards Roots Archive I thought it was like Discogs at sometime where users entered the details and other reviewed it, whatever happened?

If I'd do it for an iPhone I would break it down to XML first and then let the various front ends be in the specific type of HTML and so forth. I think it could be reasonable easy.

ponderguy wrote:As regards Roots Archive I thought it was like Discogs at sometime where users entered the details and other reviewed it, whatever happened?

No, it has never been lke that- the admins entered the data and sadly they stopped doing it.

should be opened up for editing by registered users imo, too valuable of a resource to let die out

I've posted a message on Discogs to see if there is any interest.

Let’s start the Save Our Roots Archive campaign!

Do we have any supporters?

Here's a response I received at the Discogs end :-

Slight prolbem:
1.1.1. You must have the exact release in your possession when you make a release submission. Basing your submission only on information from websites, images, or anywhere else is forbidden, as is entering information for planned releases that haven't been manufactured. Items can be submitted before the release date, but you must always have the physical copy in your possession when submitting.

Theres several very good reasons why we dont just dump reams of data from other websites into the database.

If you want to point users of that site to this site to add the information contained on items they own, then that would be great.

Another problem with HTML parsing is that it can be very slow and demanding, as you have to grab a whole lot of redundant data to sort out what you want. The HTML looks very easy to parse, though.

Good luck!