MobilityData/gbfs

Good practice regarding URLs and version upgrades

AntoineAugusti opened this issue · 6 comments

AntoineAugusti commented

Hello,

We're wondering about the recommended practice regarding GBFS versions in the URL and version upgrades.

Imagine you have example.com/gbfs/gbfs.json at 3.0 with gbfs_versions containing links to other versions (such as example.com/gbfs/2.3/gbfs.json).

You now upgrade your main GBFS version to 3.1. Reusers can be surprised by your move and it now breaks their app.

  • Should example.com/gbfs/gbfs.json switch to 3.1 silently?
  • Should producers always include the version in the URL (and avoid URLs like example.com/gbfs/gbfs.json)
  • Should producers have URLs like example.com/gbfs/latest/gbfs.json which can lead to silent version upgrades
testower commented

At Entur, we use major versions in URLs. We do minor upgrades on those safely because they are non-breaking and therefore should be backwards compatible.

richfab commented

As an additional use-case, Deutsche Bahn recently decided that they won’t represent the minor Version in the URL.

So for Deutsche Bahn, the URL for a v2.3 GBFS feed is: /apis/shared-mobility-gbfs/v2/de.

Curious to hear inputs from other producers and consumers.