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getting history for large relation

Hi, I need to find the original creator of a large relation. But osm.org always times out and OSM history viewer returns an error. Is there any other way to get the past editors of this object?

(Context: this relation is part of the E2 walking path, but this part is identical with GR5 Vlaanderen, relation 3121667. So it would seem more logical to only map it once, and have relation 3228572 only contain the relation making GR5. But maybe there is some unknown reason they do need to be duplicated - and I'd like to ask the original creator about that)

relations history

asked 19 Jul '16, 08:14

joost schouppe
3.4k●24●50●87
accept rate: 12%

2 Answers:

There are several approaches:

Download a specific version yourself: Just use https://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/relation/3228572/1 to download the first version of this relation. You can also directly access relation 3228572 to view the current version (currently 136) and then use https://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/relation/3228572/135 to download the previous version.
Use JOSM to view the history. JOSM has no problems showing the history or individual versions of this relation. You can download the relation either using File -> Download object and passing the relation ID or using File -> Open Location and passing the URL to the relation. Then select the relation and go to View -> History (Ctrl-H).
Download the history yourself: https://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/relation/3228572/history. Beware, this file is large (> 7 MB) and will likely make your system unusable if you try to view it in your browser and don't have enough RAM.

answered 19 Jul '16, 08:52

scai ♦
33.3k●21●309●459
accept rate: 23%

edited 19 Jul '16, 09:00

Thanks for this nice overview!

(19 Jul '16, 09:01) joost schouppe

TL;DR: geozeisig is the user you are looking for (or at least, created version 1 of this relation).

I have launched JOSM as java -jar josm-latest.jar --debug to capture the requests as they go across the network
downloaded the relation through File-Download Object,
selected and tried to load history.
JOSM timed out waiting for API to respond - but at least I got the URL from the exception: https://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/relation/3228572/history
Downloaded that: wget -O 3228572.osm https://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/relation/3228572/history
listed out the relation versions with grep relation < 3228572.osm. First result:
relation id="3228572" changeset="18039456" timestamp="2013-09-26T06:28:02Z" version="1" visible="true" user="geozeisig" uid="66391"

Here's a copy of the entire (7 MB) file as of today: http://osm.piskvor.org/3228572.osm

answered 19 Jul '16, 09:26

Piskvor
1.3k●9●15●35
accept rate: 37%