vaCentral status and updates

[simpilot]

The current situation with vaCentral is as follows;

I took over the hosting and maintenance of both the phpVMS and vaCentral sites in January of 2015. Nabeel's career has continued to move him to higher positions requiring more and more attention which in turn made it very hard for him to maintain any consistency with these projects. My intentions in taking over were (and still are) to continue the development of a version 3 and keep the websites up and running. As they say, good intentions never go unpunished. Since taking over, the database for phpVMS has been hacked and corrupted, the site has been the victim of 2 major DDOS attacks, and I have received close to 100 hate mails about all things phpVMS and vaCentral.

Currently the main web pages for vaCentral are down. Why? In order to try and save a little money and avoid future DDOS attacks I have moved both sites to a new server instance which also included an upgrade in terms of OS and PHP versions. For some reason this has broken the front end of vaCentral although data is still being received and recorded through the phpVMS API server, which runs the same system and setup.

I am working toward a resolution and do have the basic stats pages working for those that want to review them, they are all linked on the vaCentral.net home page. The airline stats are updating hourly and are correct. The XML feed for VA ranking is down at this time, it is next on my list of repairs.

I hope this helps explain what is going on and where vaCentral stands as of the writing of this post.

David

[simpilot]

vaCentral xml feeds should be up again.

[pupsyaus]

Great to see you taking on vacentral as well.

As for the xml feeds, I got a "The remote name could not be resolved: 'api.vacentral.net'" using a custom VA rather than phpvms. Is this still down?

[simpilot]

Great to see you taking on vacentral as well.

As for the xml feeds, I got a "The remote name could not be resolved: 'api.vacentral.net'" using a custom VA rather than phpvms. Is this still down?

There has not been a api.vacentral.net for some time. All api calls should be going to api.phpvms.net for pirep reporting. The xml feed should be structured like this (using your airline specific address)

http://www.vacentral.net/airline/cva_canadianvirtualairlines/xml

More info can be found here -> http://forum.phpvms....ite/#entry23937

[simpilot]

The live map is now back online and airline pages are starting to take shape again.

[simpilot]

I have the user accounts working and you should be able to login to your account and add/edit airlines. The new user registration should be available soon.

*NOTE: Everyone will have to change their password, use the reset password function on the login form. Your login is based on the email on your account.

[simpilot]

I have a new airports database running and working for the airport fetch in the admin panel. There are 45,000 +/- airports in it.

YES, there probably a few that are wrong. If you find one just let me know and I will fix it if you provide the information.

Some Notes:

This is only working on the vacentral api - this means you have to set your config file to access this url; api.vacentral.net and set your lookup server to phpvms. It should look like this;

Config::Set('AIRPORT_LOOKUP_SERVER', 'phpvms');
Config::Set('PHPVMS_API_SERVER', 'http://api.vacentral.net');

Fuel prices are not currently updating and all are set to 0.00 so you will probably only see a 0 in that field of the form. I do not know what the section of the form that states "Waiting for icao to update...' is really doing. There is no js code that I have come across that is attached to it. I am going to be removing that section in my version.

Also be reminded that the vaCentral api is permanently changing to the api.vacentral.net url. The api.phpvms.net url will cease to operate on 9/15/2015. If you are using vaCentral the config code should look like this;

Config::Set('VACENTRAL_ENABLED', true);
Config::Set('VACENTRAL_API_SERVER', 'http://api.vacentral.net');
Config::Set('VACENTRAL_API_KEY', '----------YOUR VACENTRAL KEY----------');

[in2tech]

This is only working on the vacentral api - this means you have to set your config file to access this url; api.vacentral.net and set your lookup server to phpvms. It should look like this;

Config::Set('AIRPORT_LOOKUP_SERVER', 'phpvms');
Config::Set('PHPVMS_API_SERVER', 'http://api.vacentral.net');

I added this to my local config file and can not get the airport lookup to work!

Thanks for your work trying to update and fix things! I appreciate it!

[simpilot]

I added this to my local config file and can not get the airport lookup to work!

Thanks for your work trying to update and fix things! I appreciate it!

With the limited information I would have to guess that you have the definition in your local config twice and the second one is set to the wrong url.

[simpilot]

I have added profiles for individual users to vaCentral with the hopes of being able to consolidate PIREPs for individual pilots into their profile and build statistics from there as well as airline operations. There is also a like system for airlines and a friend system for other users. I have marked all exiting profiles to private and you must change it to public if you want your profile view-able by anyone other than yourself.

[simpilot]

Website links for airlines have returned to the airline detail pages with visit counts.

[josh90]

Hi David,

Would just like to express my thanks for taking on the running and development of phpVMS/vaCentral.

I'm sure it's appreciated by many, even though it's probably not said often.

Keep up the great work.

Josh

[simpilot]

I have added weather search by ICAO, the start of an aircraft database (72 aircraft), and a FAA preferred route search function to the site.

[in2tech]

With the limited information I would have to guess that you have the definition in your local config twice and the second one is set to the wrong url.

Thanks SimPilot,

I had it in the top area of the config file and when I moved it down it worked. Go figure!

I would also like to thank you for all your hard work on phpVMS, vaCentral, your modules, etc...

[flyalaska]

I have blocked out my VA Central code in my config. I am going to re activate my VA Central. Is there any other files that refer to VA Central that I may have blocked out?

[simpilot]

I have blocked out my VA Central code in my config. I am going to re activate my VA Central. Is there any other files that refer to VA Central that I may have blocked out?

If you only commented out the config code then that is all that should have to be changed. It looks like you have already done that as your data is showing up on the vaCentral site except for live flights, but it looks like you use smartCars which does not report in a way that allows the flights to be shown on the live map.

[flyalaska]

I wasn't sure if there was another file. I see we are active again. We are in the process of dumping SmartACARS.

[simpilot]

Looking like things are starting to take shape!

[miked1122]

I wasn't sure if there was another file. I see we are active again. We are in the process of dumping SmartACARS.

Are smartcars not going to integrate the Live VACentral feature ?

[Txmmy83]

Are smartcars not going to integrate the Live VACentral feature ?

Hi,

the problem with smartcars is that it is closed-source software (means source code is not available for developers because of it's Payware nature)

[simpilot]

Are smartcars not going to integrate the Live VACentral feature ?

As Txmmy83 states, it is payware and not something we can change. Your question is best asked of the developer on his site.

[Morgan]

ok its been almost a year or more and VA Central still says returning soon... any update

[LuxuryCEO]

On 7/21/2018 at 2:09 PM, Morgan said:

ok its been almost a year or more and VA Central still says returning soon... any update

i am also curious about this

[Heritage1]

That makes many of us I'm sure, I to am curious.

[Karamellwuerfel]

+ 1 year - no change 😉 
I think it will be returning when phpvms 7 is released

[LuxuryCEO]

On 11/7/2019 at 2:31 PM, Karamellwuerfel said:

+ 1 year - no change 😉 
I think it will be returning when phpvms 7 is released

am thinking the same thing

[SmarticleCo]

any updates on this yet?

[ProAvia]

10 hours ago, SmarticleCo said:

any updates on this yet?

 

No - functionality may return at some point after phpVMS v7 is released.