Thread: data.lotro.com and efficient use

I know the chances are somewhere between slim and none to see this addressed before hell freezes over, but I figured I'd give it a try anyway, just to see if there might be some chance of improvement.

Problem #1
In order to get the URLs of the slot icons, you have to load each item's data first, resulting in a maximum of 21 requests (character data + 20 item data) before a simple character sheet can be displayed.

Suggestion #1

Character data's item tag should look something closer to this:

Code:

< item item_id="1879151851" name="Deft-blade's Leggings" slot="Legs" iconUrl="http://content.turbine.com/sites/lorebook.lotro.com/images/icons/item/legs/eq_legs_med_tier1_set_2_burglar.png"/>

Reason #1
The lorebook link is incredibly redundant, as it's the same URL for all items, with the already given item_id. including the iconURL on the other hand, allows for all immediately necessary character data to be loaded with a single request.

Problem #2
Set pieces only have their id shown, requiring a request for each set piece, just to get its name. This ends up requiring an additional 2-4 requests per item that's part of a set, just to be able to display a tooltip.

Suggestion #2

Code:

< piece id="1879151843" name="Deft-blade's Jacket"/>
< piece id="1879151851" name="Deft-blade's Leggings"/>
< piece id="1879151854" name="Deft-blade's Gauntlets"/>

Reason #2

Although the id is nice, proper display of the tooltip requires the set piece's name. Adding this as a 2nd attribute to the piece tag would fix this - without having to make multiple requests to get the names by loading each item by its id.

Final result

a data feed that minimizes the number of requests required to both display a character page with slot icons, and to display tooltips with set pieces - resulting in much more efficient usage, and cutting back on server load.

Presuming that all of this data is stored in a database, these changes should take less time to implement than it took for me to write this post. However, since it's unfair to presume anything, including the current workload of the web devs, I'm not going to expect this change to take place with anywhere near the urgency or ambition that I would hope.

P.S.

The redirect on your icons throws a 404 error, even though it successfully redirects to the "?" icon. This usually results in either a load error being thrown, or simply a "broken" image. Basically a major PITA to deal with.