168438 - Anonymous access to the database or simple generated bug text on bugzilla cgi

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Bugzilla :: Bugzilla-General, enhancement)

Description

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

It would be nice if Bugzilla had the ability to provide some level of 
anonymous access to the database so that people could query the database 
without being authenticated. This could be used, say, for sites that want to 
track some Bugzilla installation (maybe for graphing bug dependencies) but 
don't have authenticated access to the database. The only other option would 
be to go through the generated bug pages 1 by 1 and rip out the useful fields 
on a possibly constantly changing page layout. It would be much nicer if you 
could just grab it. Maybe there could be a cgi that could provide much simpler 
formatted data (like text) maybe like 25 bugs at a time with keeping security 
issues in mind.

Comment 1

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Err, we've always had the ability to query without logging in ...

Comment 2

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

I'm talking about the raw data... Not generated HTML (with security in mind)

Comment 3

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

Why should people be able to access the database directly at all?  That's not a
Bugzilla issue anyway ...

Comment 4

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

It is if we don't give them direct access but provide formatted text for them 
with CGIs.

Comment 5

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Matthew: With all due respect, did you read my description?

I think the best way to do this would be to generate a raw txt output within a 
certain range so that it can be grabbed and used.

The reason I feel this is necessary is so that 3rd party sites can provide 
visuals, summaries, etc.

For example: A summary of number of unfixed bugs, a graph of the hierarchy of 
dupes, dependant bugs, etc.. things like that without having to parse 
generated HTML which might not be stable.

Comment 6

[Matthew Tuck [:CodeMachine]]

I read it and it didn't make sense.

So what you want is an XML buglist.  I think there's a bug for that somewhere.

Comment 7

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

This is already done.

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=168438&format=rdf
for example.  (Put whatever query you feel like in there if you want more than
one bug returned)

Comment 8

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Hmm.. nice. What about comments? 

Is this documented?

...not marking Verified though since I'm still not sure whether you can get 
comments or other information like votes and dependant bugs.

Comment 9

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

if you want comments and other data, try this:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/xml.cgi?id=168438,168439,168440