Better source of holiday definitions available?

[ypid]

Currently, we have our own holiday definition files for various countries/states in https://github.com/opening-hours/opening_hours.js/tree/master/holidays. It would be better to collaborate on one unified data source.

I finally found an interesting collection of holiday definitions in https://github.com/KDE/kholidays. It would probably be worth cooperating/merging with kholidays somehow.

[ypid]

Hm, I missed that kholidays does not go down to state level (of Germany for example, ref: https://github.com/KDE/kholidays/blob/master/holidays/plan2/holiday_de_de). We in opening_hours.js do that to output accurate results.

I also checked International Components for Unicode (ICU) now which is widely used http://site.icu-project.org/. Same issue, also does not go down to the state level (ref: https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/blob/873e2db78070d3015a54f9d9aa81e97095cd9dba/icu4j/main/classes/core/src/com/ibm/icu/impl/data/HolidayBundle_de_DE.java).

So the search continues. If anybody finds a better source we could merge with, please ping me.

[pke]

Maybe its time for a dedicated curated Web API that could be used?

[ypid]

How does that solve the issue?

[pke]

An up to date API for public holidays I meant. It could be used during a build step to update the local copies of public holidays.

[ypid]

Sure but what should be the data source this API could provide? That is what this issue is about.

[HolgerJeromin]

IMHO he suggest a browser API like https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Intl

Than the browser vendors would have the responsability to provide the data.
But perhaps @pke suggested something different :-)

[pke]

Not sure what is so unclear. The API returns public holidays. They are entered there manually from someone, since the German government is unable to provide anything but PDFs for annual school holidays for instance.

I remember discussing this here before and voila: #192

The people of schulferien.org still haven't opened their data, have they?

[ypid]

I get your point. The thing is that it is unrelated to this issue.

manually from someone

This goes more into what this issue is about. I am thinking of one place, where the international community (manually) tracks public and school holiday as Open Data for everybody to use because other commercial or government entities are unable to do that as we have experienced.

PS: Thanks again for contacting the German KMK 👍

The people of schulferien.org still haven't opened their data, have they?

I have not checked recently, but I think I talked about this before. Their service depends on ads and they don’t want to lose control over the data.

[pke]

I think something like POST /de-nw/2019-12-23/2020-01-06?name=Weihnachstferien would be enough in the beginning to get the collection started?
The service could even have default date ranges to figure out the name of the (school) holidays itself.
Also there are rule based holidays like Thanks Giving that can be calculated without user input.

[ypid]

ypid wrote:

I get your point. The thing is that it is unrelated to this issue.

To keep things structured I created #303. The discussion can be continued there.

[HolgerJeromin]

The smart home software openhab uses: https://github.com/svendiedrichsen/jollyday

https://www.heise.de/developer/meldung/Smart-Home-openHAB-2-5-kennt-Weihnachten-und-faehrt-im-neuen-Tesla-4615882.html

[ypid]

Thanks, that also scrolled through my feed reader today 😉 I now checked it quickly and it looks promising:

https://github.com/svendiedrichsen/jollyday/blob/master/src/main/resources/holidays/Holidays_de.xml
https://github.com/svendiedrichsen/jollyday/blob/master/src/main/resources/holidays/Holidays_ch.xml

[ypid]

And there is https://github.com/dr-prodigy/python-holidays but there are no plans to add school holiday support, ref: https://github.com/dr-prodigy/python-holidays/issues/249.

https://github.com/dr-prodigy/python-holidays/blob/master/holidays/countries/germany.py

CC: @T-Born (ref: https://github.com/dr-prodigy/python-holidays/issues/249), @afaucogney (ref: https://github.com/dr-prodigy/python-holidays/issues/120)

[Lee-Carre]

I am thinking of one place, where the international community (manually) tracks public and school holiday as Open Data for everybody to use

A comparable project, for inspiration, is the time-zone database. Though, problems still occur when governments give little to zero notice of forthcoming changes, when distribution latency is non-zero.

On the point about machine-readable formats for easy importation, I wonder if some carefully-worded FoI requests might be worth a try. Not sure about other jurisdictions, but I vaguely recall that here (Jersey) one can at least request specific formats (or give clues as to intended usage, to enable the administrators to select an existing format). Might be something related to (if I recall) the legislation making mention of responses being in sane formats (I forget the precise wording: sane as we would define it; libre, standardised, easy to parse).

Is there no equivalent of http://data.gov.de/ which might host what you seek?

Pity that Germany isn't setting the example with this, what with the reputation for efficiency & doing things properly. Maybe that only applies once sensible rules & procedures are already established.