Custom per-match data support

[madduck]

As I am working with Squore and other tools, I am trying very hard to avoid keeping too much local state, which is just very hard to keep up-to-date. Therefore, I really appreciate your design by which you resend all the match information and metadata with every point and other event.

Would it be hard to let me provide some extra per-match data in the matches feed, i.e. a key extra in the JSON struct that, if present, gets included by Squore in all its JSON output?

# MatchesFeed:
{
  "config": {
    "tiebreakFormat": "TwoClearPoints",
    […]
  },
  "Court 1": [
    {
      "id": 38,
      "court": "C1",
      "date": "Jun 2007-06-06",
      "time": "10:15",
      "test": true,
      "field": "Elimination 1, MS - 3",
      "A": {
        "name": "Richard Sauer",
        "club": "Vennewater",
        "country": "USA",
        "colour": null
      },
      "B": {
        "name": "Dik Velden",
        "club": "Bakkum",
        "country": "USA",
        "colour": null
      },
      "extra": {                     ««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««
        "custom_data": "foo",
        […]
      }
    },
    […]
  ]
}

and this would then mean that Squore publishes on MQTT:

{                                                                                           
  "score": […]
  "result": "2-0",
  "gamescores": "11-8,11-5,10-7",
  "server": "A",
  "serveSide": "L",
  "isHandOut": false,
  "isGameBall": true,
  "isMatchBall": true,
  "maxNrOfPowerPlays": 2,
  "players": {
    "A": "Richard Sauer",
    "B": "Dik Velden"
  },
  […],
  "metadata": {
    […]
  },
  "extra": {                           ««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««
    "custom_data": "foo"
  }
}

[obbimi]

To what end do you want this exactly?

And in stead of sending this static 'extra' data with every change in every match, can you not use 'meta.source' to identify the feed the match came from and use that to obtain the data you need?

[madduck]

To what end do you want this exactly?

It would allow me to avoid keeping local state, which inevitably goes out of sync.

My concrete use case is:

1. Match A is put on court. When my backend receives a message from Squore, the previously "scheduled" match is converted to an "ongoing" match.
2. Next, imagine that actually match A doesn't start, so match B is put on the court instead.
3. Now match A is in an undefined state. I can easily convert it back to a scheduled state, but I actually don't have the scheduled time anymore.
4. Thus, I need to somehow keep a record of when a given match was scheduled.
5. I could ask you to augment the JSON structure to include a "scheduled" field, but you probably don't want to cater to every edge case like this.
6. Thus, I was thinking that there could be one custom field that I could send to Squore and rely on Squore sending the data back. This is quite a common pattern (e.g. SYN cookies, Python click context object, …)

[obbimi]

A bit like a match has an 'id' to correlate it, but also a 'cookie'. Both are initially provided in the feed and fixed in every POST when sending intermediate match 'changes'? Correct?