WattDepot Data Retrieval Library Design

This week, I started the design phase of WattDepot Data Retrieval Library. In my last blog post, I brought up 5 points that need to be taken care of. This time, I will apply these regulations to my specific project.

1. Focus of the library.
WattDepot Data Retrieval Library is basically designed for retrieving data from a WattDepot Server in a convenient manner. WattDepot is an open source, RESTful web service that collects electricity data from meters and stores it in a database. Here is the Google project hosting page for WattDepot. Right now, users have to manually create the XMLhttpRequests in their page to get the raw data in XML format, which involves a lot of repeating code in generating XMLhttpRequest and data parsing. WattDepot Data Retrieval Library's mission is to simplify this procedure and retrieve data in a user friendly way.

2. Functions should be included in the library.
For the version 1.0, I think I should at least have three types of functions:
a. Function that creates a connection to a WattDepot server. This help your site connect to WattDepot Server and handle the feedback.
b. A series of functions that generates different queries. For example, a function that gets all the source detail in the server would be nice.
c. Function that dynamically parses XML data and translates the content into a different format(JSON).

3. Generality of the library.
This library should work for most common-used browsers. From my previous experience, there is a same origin policy to deal with when retrieving data from a server another domain. Right now, only Firefox has been tested working when using a XMLhttpRequest to retrieve some data. More tests and researches are needed on this subject.

4. Naming convention of the library.
The library object name should be unique(WattDepotData). Variables and functions should follow Java naming conventions. Function with a common name should check for override.

5. Documentation of the library.
The library should have comment before every function. The comment should include the documentation of objective of the function, parameters, return value, and possible exceptions. Global variables should also have in-line comments.

Here is the initial blueprint of the library. The following week, I will start looking at the data structure that WattDepot server provides and organize it into JSON format.