Badge request: Flathub downloads

[tooomm]

📋 Description

• Which service is this badge for e.g: GitHub, Travis CI
  Flathub: https://flathub.org

• What sort of information should this badge show?
  Download count of a particular package. Currently only a version badge is supported.

• Provide an example in plain text e.g: "version | v1.01" or as a static badge
  (static badge generator can be found at https://shields.io)
  Flathub Downloads | 123.456

🔗 Data

Where can we get the data from?

There is all the data at https://flathub.org/stats/ in various json files.
This page uses the data already: https://klausenbusk.github.io/flathub-stats/

🎤 Motivation

• What is the specific use case?

Showing useful download data like all time, recent month etc. as with other services.

[chris48s]

I think the data in the structure at https://flathub.org/stats/ isn't workable for us: In order to query that on-the-fly in the form the data is provided (1 json file per day) we would have to make many network requests to get the stats for a single package over a period of time (i.e: to do downloads for 1 month we'd have to make ~30 requests).

It looks like https://klausenbusk.github.io/flathub-stats/ relies on a GH actions ETL job which runs on a schedule, harvests it all and writes it all back out to github in one-file-per-package format rather than one-file-per-day format: https://github.com/klausenbusk/flathub-stats/tree/gh-pages/data

[JakobDev]

There is now a API for that: https://flathub.org/api/v2/stats/{appid}. e.g to query the Stats of Firefox: https://flathub.org/api/v2/stats/org.mozilla.firefox

[chris48s]

Is this API public/documented? I can't seem to find any docs or acknowledgment it exists on flathub.org.

The reason I ask is because we've had some situations where a contributor worked out that a project had an API by inspecting the frontend code for their website or whatever, added a badge that calls it, and then we ended up relying on an API that wasn't really intended for public use. This then either annoyed the maintainers of the company/project behind it or we had no reasonable expectation of stability/compatibility over time (because devs maintaining the the API were making the assumption the only thing consuming it was their own frontend code) and stuff kept breaking.

Also, assuming this is an API we can use, are there any rate limits on public use? I could see this badge being widely enough used over time for this to become a concern.

Thanks

[JakobDev]

I created a Issue at Flathub to ask if it is safe to use. If not, we should take a look at https://klausenbusk.github.io/flathub-stats/ which linked above. We also may have a Problem with the Flathub version Badge, which uses Version 1 of the API.

[tooomm]

Thanks for adding this in #7724 @JakobDev! It works nicely. ❤️

I'm just wondering why you label it downloads if it's "only" installs. Downloads is misleading here IMHO, users don't know that flathub differentiates here further.
I think the badge would be more clear and helpful, if installs+updates stats would be combined, or the label states which subsection we display. Looks like in the flathub website repo and related issues (flathub-infra/website#67) it got mentioned as well... and they finally went with Installs as seen in the beta, e.g: https://beta.flathub.org/en/apps/details/org.mozilla.firefox

[JakobDev]

When I created the PR, it was ladled downloads. I later only make it work with the API changes. and forgot to change the Label. If that label bothered you too much, you can create a PR to change it.

[tooomm]

I later only make it work with the API changes. and forgot to change the Label.

Nevermind. I just proposed a relabel. Please have a look if I got it right: #7958

Others might still want a real download badge (installs+updates) though.