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Technical overview

We publish climbing content ("data") in two forms, human-readable and machine-readable. Having two representations of the same data enables us to address multiple community needs.

Benefits of a climbing route wiki:​

We're hoping by creating a useful and easy-to-use wiki with a powerful "search engine" that provides value to our users, we can build a community of editors that will help us identify inaccuracies and improve the underlying data.

Benefits of open access to machine-readabe climbing data:​

  • Enable independent developers to build on and enrich the existing ecosystem.
  • Provide data science students with much needed datasets.
  • Increase the efficiency of public research related to climbing.

Data flow

Climbing route wiki​

Inspired by Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap, the web application (code name OpenTacos) provides the climbing community with a searchable catalog of climbing routes.

Live site: https://tacos.openbeta.io
Source code: https://github.com/openbeta/open-tacos

Climbing data​

Climbing datasets in CSV, jsonlines, and Python pickle format.

Source code: https://github.com/openbeta/climbing-data

API service​

A GraphQL-based API that provides data for OpenTacos. We plan to open the API to public at some point in 2022. Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter.

Source code: https://github.com/openbeta/openbeta-graphql

Climbing grade library (aka "SandBag")​

A JavaScript/TypeScript library for doing grade validation, conversion and comparision.

Source code: https://github.com/OpenBeta/sandbag