Inspiration
I started work on SWTORData because the existing database options were either officially shutting down or were obviously no longer being supported.
I wanted to create a service that was not only a great website, but also provided an API for anyone else to use to build their own services without needing to duplicate the basic database service.
Third Party Work
The overall design of the current website was built by a friend of mine. I have continued to maintain it since, but the vast majority of the CSS was not done by me.
The tooltip code also uses a third party library.
The tool used to extract the data from the game was built on contract by a third party
Evolution
This project has been the most actively worked on project I have done. Most other projects I only actively worked on for a couple months, with SWTORData over a year later I don't see an end in sight for what could be added to the service.
The amount of data has grown consideribly from what was originally available
More and more of my effort is going towards supporting the API with the eventual goal of turning the SWTORData application itself into only an API with a separate UI.
More recently, two of my other applications, SWTOREvents and SWTORCartel were merged into SWTORData. This is only done on the UI, the backend remain separate. SWTORConquest will also be merged in at a later date. Below I have a graph showing how the data flows for all of these applications.
Bots
I have always liked automated processes. So all of my sites use various bots in different ways.
I have a couple web crawlers, automated twitter messages, automated posts to reddit, and customizable email alerts.
In some cases these were built as separate services early on and I have a project to combine them where possible.
SWTORData also now has a bot as part of my "scanner" system (system that logs into the game and grabs various data) for scanning the GTN (in game marketplace) and displaying that data on the website.
Status
Live – www.swtordata.com
