Can anyone think of a good way to structure a telegram query for the database?
Probably, entering the ICAO code only and getting the entire report is a bit much data.
What sort of features would people like to see?
Does telegram have access to your location, for transmission to the server (e.g. for selecting nearby airports)?
You can send the location to a telegram bot (try it in autorouter).
For starters it would help to be able to quickly relay via bot
Where
(Landing) fees
Fuel availability* and price
IFR/VFR/Both
Hard/Grass
Customs/Immigration
Again, it can be chat based asking the user
U Hello
B Hello! Where are you?
U EDDF
B Copied. Please tell me the landing fee.
U 1234€
B Copied. Is there Mogas?
U No
B Is there avgas?
U No
B Is there jetfuel?
U Yes
B What was the price per litre incl. tax?
U 0.35€
B Are IFR procedures available?
U Yes
B Is the runway hard surface?
U Yes
B Is the taxiway hard surface?
U Yes
etc….
or one can enter a string and send it
U Send me report code format
B Ok. Please fill in
ICAO/Name, 00 [Eur, landing fee], J 0.35 [jetfuel price], A [avgas], M [mogas], IFR [IFR/VFR], hard/soft [runway], hard/soft [taxiway]…
„ICAO/Name, 50, J 0.35, IFR, hard, soft…“
Snoopy wrote:
Again, it can be chat based asking the user
I guess Peter thought the other way – getting the report rather than submitting it.
Yes this is a read-only interface.
Creating records, as discussed before in the various airport database threads, requires some form of user authentication to prevent somebody trashing it, and the user interface is of necessity more complex, to select from the various options at each step. I would be amazed if anybody actually used a telegram interface for creating records, since you will be running telegram on a smartphone (at least) and you can fill out a form in a fraction of the time on that.
The idea of having access to user location is that you can select airports within a certain radius.
Peter wrote:
The idea of having access to user location is that you can select airports within a certain radius.
Sending location to telegram bot (standard telegram functionality) at the beginning of the session (or within the session as response to bot’s question) is sufficient.
OK can anyone think of a command set?
We got huge long posts from people who wanted access to the data to republish elsewhere, but when it comes to enhancing our project they are silent 
Peter wrote:
OK can anyone think of a command set?
https://www.euroga.org/forums/trips-airports/11898-euroga-airports-database/post/272608#272608
That’s a start.
We have a clear context: the telegram bot is for the airports database, so no need to make the commands longer than necessary.
So one could have
rep
for all reports within say 50nm of current client location, and they would be presented like
1. Shoreham EGKA
2. Biggin Hill EGKB
etc
and then you would enter 1 or 2 etc, only, to get that report.
Same for weather, AIP, notams:
wx egka egkb
aip egka egkb
not[am] egka (only 1 airport code allowed, to avoid confusion)
Any other suggestions?
If the client GPS location is not available (as with e.g. a PC or a laptop) then we have to find some other way to centre the airport list.
There has been a couple of small fixes to the database.
Using the browser Back button would lose the date of visit field, which was likely to grey-out the Submit button. The fix may not work on some browsers; such is life. But if you get a greyed-out Submit, check the date of visit is set. Could be worse, making the Back button totally useless has been the pinnacle of “fashionable web design using trendy frameworks” for the last few years
There is a check for the total image upload size being below 100MB. Currently there is a 40MB limit per image, but Cloudflare (the free version) limits the total submit package to 100MB. The images are stored downsized so you don’t need to downsize them beforehand to save our server space.
