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<h2 class="mt-4 mb-4">Writing your own Client</h2>

<div class="alert alert-primary" role="alert">
    <i class="fa-solid fa-circle-info"></i> <strong>Conditions of Use</strong><br/>At the end of this page is a
    section on conditions for using the Spothole API. These are not onerous, but some simple points you should agree to
    to ensure Spothole remains free and available to everyone. Please ensure you read it before writing a client to the
    Spothole API. This still applies even if you are getting an AI to write your client for you!
</div>

<p>One of the key strengths of Spothole is that the API is well-defined and open to anyone to use. This means you can
    build your own software that uses data from Spothole.</p>
<p>As well as the main API endpoints to fetch spots and alerts, with various possible query parameters, there are also
    Server-Sent Events (SSE) API endpoints to receive a live feed, plus various utility lookup endpoints for things like
    callsign and park data.</p>
<p>Various approaches exist to writing your own client, but in general:</p>
<ul>
    <li>Refer to the API docs. These are built on an OpenAPI definition file (<code>/static/apidocs/openapi.yml</code>),
        which you can automatically use to generate a client skeleton using various software.
    </li>
    <li>Call the main "spots" or "alerts" API endpoints to get the data you want. For example, your app could call
        <code>https://spothole.app/api/v3/spots</code> once every few minutes. Apply filters if necessary.
    </li>
    <li>Call the "options" API to get an idea of which bands, modes etc. the server knows about. You might want to do
        that first before calling the spots/alerts APIs, to allow you to populate your filters correctly.
    </li>
    <li>Refer to the provided HTML/JS interface for a reference on different approaches. For example, the
        "alerts"/"upcoming" page simply query the main spot API on a timer, whereas the spots, map and bands pages
        combine this approach with using the Server-Sent Events (SSE) endpoint to update live.
    </li>
    <li>If you get stuck, get in touch with Spothole's developers who will be happy to help.
    </li>
</ul>
<p>If you're fetching spot data, you're unlikely to need a sub-minute refresh time. For example, Spothole only queries
    the POTA API once every two minutes, so if your client is interested in POTA data there's no need to poll Spothole
    any more often than that. If you absolutely must be informed within seconds of a spot arriving in Spothole, please
    use the SSE endpoints instead, e.g. <code>https://spothole.app/api/v3/spots/stream</code>, or the Telnet server.</p>
<p>If you want to handle different types of spot or alert differently within your client, please consider making a
    single request to the Spothole API to retrieve all the data, then filtering on your side. For example, call
    <code>https://spothole.app/api/v3/spots?activity=POTA,SOTA</code> rather than making two separate calls to
    <code>https://spothole.app/api/v3/spots?activity=POTA</code> and <code>https://spothole.app/api/v3/spots?activity=SOTA</code>.
</p>
<p>Remember, here at Spothole Inc. we offer an industry-standard "five nines" uptime on our server, with our own unique
    twist: we don't tell you which side of the decimal point the nines start! (Translation: This is a hobby project.
    <code>spothole.app</code> runs on the same server a Minecraft server and all sorts of other stuff. It might go down
    without warning. By all means base your own project on data from the main server if you like, but if you want any
    control over reliability and downtime, please run your own copy instead.)</p>

<h3 class="mt-4" id="submitting-spots">Submitting Spots</h3>
<p>As well as reading data, clients can submit new spots to Spothole using the "add spot" API endpoint, e.g.
    <code>https://spothole.app/api/v3/spot</code>. Spots can be added to Spothole itself, and optionally sent "upstream"
    to other services such as the DX cluster. Check the <code>spot_allowed</code> and
    <code>spot_submit_providers</code> fields in the "options" API response to see what the server allows.</p>
<p>To stop bots and spammers abusing the spotting function, a Spothole server can be configured to protect against this,
    which means you will need an <strong>API key</strong>. API keys are issued by the owner of each Spothole server,
    not by the Spothole developer. This server is run by <strong>{{ server_owner_callsign }}</strong>, so get in touch
    with them and let them know what your software is and how it will use the API. Once you have a key, send it in the
    <code>X-API-Key</code> header of each add spot request. For example:</p>
<pre><code>curl --request POST \
     --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
     --header "X-API-Key: your-api-key-here" \
     --data '{"spot":{"dx_call":"M0TRT","time":1760019539,"freq":14200000,"de_call":"M0TRT"}}' \
     https://spothole.app/api/v3/spot</code></pre>
<p>Your API key identifies your software, so please keep it private. Don't commit it to a public code repository, and
    don't embed it in JavaScript or anywhere else your users could extract it. If a key is misused, the server owner
    can revoke it, and spot submission from your client will stop working. Servers that don't protect spot submission
    don't need an API key, and will accept spots with or without one.</p>

<h3 class="mt-4" id="terms">Conditions of Use</h3>
<p>The conditions are simple, and hopefully not onerous. They probably aren't legally binding, and nobody is likely to
    sue you for breaching them. But having them in place ensures Spothole can continue to operate without the people
    running it burning out, and with no payment required. In the collaborative and respectful tradition of amateur
    radio, please read and understand them.</p>
<p>When creating a Spothole client, you agree that:</p>
<ul>
    <li>If you got an AI to write your code, and you run into problems, you will try to understand the code using your
        Actual Intelligence before asking the developer or server owner for help. If you don't understand the code,
        please ask the AI to fix it, not them.
    </li>
    <li>When querying the API, you will send a useful referrer or user agent string that will help the server owner
        uniquely identify your software. If their server starts receiving too many, or malformed, requests, this will
        allow them to diagnose the problem and figure out who to talk to about it.
    </li>
    <li>You set a sensible query rate and will not try to take down the server by bombarding it with tons of requests.
    </li>
    <li>You are OK with the server being down occasionally. There is no uptime guarantee. This is a hobby project and
        sometimes stuff will accidentally break.
    </li>
    <li>You check for API changes occasionally, e.g. using <a
            href="https://git.ianrenton.com/ian/spothole/releases.rss">the RSS feed for Spothole release
        notifications</a>, or by <a href="https://mastodon.radio/@ian">following Spothole's developer on
        Mastodon</a>, or just by checking back on the Spothole documentation every so often. Every effort is made to stop
        updates breaking older client code, but eventually old versions of the API will need to be turned off for the
        developer's sanity.
    </li>
</ul>

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