Cumulus Support

Since my present site hostpapa is useless at ftp forcing me to host live data locally I been looking round for a web host. Mainly because I don't want to mess around with trying to get ssl to work with multiple domains and dynamic dns.

I asked webwiz and they first came back with a load of rubbish saying it takes up too much server resources. I pointed out I was running a web server with a constant live speed and it's hardly using any resources at all.

They then came back with a better response saying it's a security issue having to have so many ports open on the web server and asked why don't you use Rest Api to do the transfer instead.

It actually looks fairly interesting however examples of the api were over my head using database as examples. I said there's zero chance of this being written into CumulusMX but I'd ask so here am asking.

They finally came back with another bit of rubbish that sftp isn't supported on windows. Mmmm strange as I've seen some about.

If you post the API info then maybe someone can offer some pointers?

Regarding SFTP on Windows, do they mean they do not support it on their Windows hosts? Do they offer Linux hosts? Obviously there are loads of SFTP clients for Windows, including Cumulus MX!

They only use windows servers and sftp isn't supported on windows so they say. They don't use linux hosts.

Ho hum I know that's rubbish in regards to windows.

I'll ask where I can get the api info from them.

I noticed sftp in cumulusmx I guess I would have to generate a private key on my web server using puttygen for that to work if I install and sftp server on that.

You can use Cumulus SFTP with either a key file or a username/password

LIke to do it properly though plus I want to prove webwiz wrong. So do I generate the key on the server end?

No, you generate keys locally - then copy the public key to the web host server. Your data will be encrypted by Cumulus MX using the private key stored locally, then whoever wishes to decrypt the data will do so using the public key which you supply to whoever needs it - your web host in this instance.

Thanks for the info. Just noticed that my host has started using sftp. Doesn't work though no surprise there even when using there template and ftp client.

Right got some info

Hi

It use to be SOAP API's that use XML where the most common, but in the last 5 years REST API's that use JSON tend to be much more common.

A REST API runs on a web sever and you send requests and responses to the API using JSON and the API responds by replying with the result as JSON which you then parse. I found the following that may explain better;

https://restfulapi.net/

How it works is allow of devices these days have a built in web server that hosts their API. You then connect from an external source such as a website to send a command, such as a status request. The API then responds with the results such as a list of temperatures, wind speed, etc, which you can then parse and display on your website.

Regards,
Web Wiz

So basically they are saying configure web site on their server to pull the data it needs from the computer you are running at home. Not going to happen is it! Cumulus does have an API but is not secure and only intended for local access.