Feature Request: Write support to "launch" a "rocket" using API

@jakewmeyer Thanks for awesome work! 🙂

I noticed that all the APIs are ready only. Or did I miss something? How about adding write support? So that we can do something like below and launch rockets with the API! 🚀

POST https://api.spacexdata.com/v2/launches

We can also use HTTP PUT instead, if “putting” a rocket into space feels more semantic! 😉

[jakewmeyer]

Currently read only because of the following:

Applications using the API depend on accurate, vetted, and up to date information, and allowing anyone to post arbitrary new launches/data could cause potential issues, even with proper validation and testing. While the majority of people would submit good data, it does open up an avenue of attack for people with malicious intent. Currently a handful of us in the org have database access, and keep things pretty up to date given the circumstances.

However, I do like the collaborative aspect of this, and would be willing to add POST endpoints with some form of authentication to trusted parties. This will need to be implemented sooner or later, so the data can be updated programmatically, vs just editing the database directly.

So I’ll start a branch for this, and I’ll start researching proper authentication solutions, and we can go from there! 👍

[jakewmeyer]

Going to close this for the time being, but might revisit sometime in the future.

Currently most of the time sensitive and labor intensive updating is now done automatically with update scripts, which makes this less of a problem.

Most of the data is pulled directly from the subreddit wiki pages, which doesn’t require us to build a full authentication system just to update data that is already going to be updated on the wiki. Those editing the wiki need an account that is 180+ days old, and subreddit karma of 500+. Because of this, the data is generally accurate, and lots of eyes go over the data every day. Updates are quick, and there’s already a dedicated team in place that helps manage the wiki and contribute data.

So going forward, I’m planning on improving these scripts further to pull even more data from the wiki for updates, instead of building our own update system from the ground up. I just think it’s better to make use of a quality existing system.