Improve AppImage Listings retrieval about nx-software-center HOT 2 CLOSED

I see two main strategies around this.

1. In certain intervals, e.g., once per hour, get the feed from https://appimage.github.io/feed.json using a cron job on a server and get the version information from the upstream sites; then output another feed which is in turn consumed by the clients; or
2. When launching the client, only show information that is contained in https://appimage.github.io/feed.json and only when the user clicks on a certain application, start fetching the version information (and other advanced metadata) for that application

Both strategies should dramatically improve launch times. Strategy 1 has the advantage that you can tell which already-downloaded AppImages need to be updated. Strategy 2 has the advantage that new versions will show up in the same moment they are published by the author, which is what I would strongly prefer. Maybe both strategies could even be combined to give the best of both worlds.

Or

3. Just present HTML pages that are produced on the server

Whatever we do, I think we should try to avoid downloading huge listings to the client. Personally I dislike that in debian-like systems, I always have to wait for minutes to download information about all the packages out there when in fact I only want to install git...

from nx-software-center.

I just started the nx-software-center-server it will provide a JSON formated web API of the AppImage listings. It will be feed by scrappers from appimagehub.com and and appimage.github.io and also manually for special cases.

from nx-software-center.