Indoor navigation (c3nav) based on room guid

[johnjohndoe]

Context

• At the Chaos Communication Congress c3nav is used for indoor navigation.
• The Android Schedule app integrates with c3nav via a room guid.
• The Chaos Communication Congress schedule.xml contains a guid attribute for each room.
• The c3nav instance for the Chaos Communication Congress converts a stable guid into the most recent room name.

Motivation

• Using guid instead room name decouples the schedule app from c3nav.
• The schedule app no longer needs to hardcode room names which often outdate and therefore cannot be updated during the event.
• The indoor navigation just works.

Request

• Add a guid attribute to each room in the schedule.xml for FOSDEM.
• Map each room guid to the latest room name in the c3nav instance for FOSDEM.

Related

• Conversion rule for room name mappings / new guid redirect c3nav/c3nav#124
• Add support for indoor navigation (c3nav) based on room guid. EventFahrplan/EventFahrplan#583

[thibaultmol]

Just so you're aware: FOSDEM already has an instance of c3nav: https://nav.fosdem.org/
And on the actual website, any mention of a room will have link to our c3nav instance with that location.

[cbeyls]

The FOSDEM Companion app currently uses the room name to generate a slug which is passed as a destination to FOSDEM's c3nav. It works well enough so far but would be more robust if we had a unique room id across apps indeed.

[Gys]

Just so you're aware: FOSDEM already has an instance of c3nav: https://nav.fosdem.org/ And on the actual website, any mention of a room will have link to our c3nav instance with that location.

I have been to FOSDEM 5 or 6 times already. Finding rooms is always very frustrating. Never knew about this link until reading this comment and actually looking this up now...

[johnjohndoe]

In the FOSDEM Schedule app the "Navigate" item is hidden in the "more" menu:

The menu item will only appear if the guid is present or a hardcoded room name matches the latest name.

[johnjohndoe]

Are you planning to implement the room guid?

[johnjohndoe]

@johanvdw Any plans for this year to add support for room guid?

[johanvdw]

I don't think anyone has time implementing this. I also dont' really understand which issue it solves. Rooms have a short name which is stable:
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/room/ud6203/

Adding another id would only complicate things.

[johnjohndoe]

Thank you for your answer. If room names are stable at FOSDEM, then there will be no issue.

Adding guids is a precautions act because I have seen room names changing at many events over the past decade. Once this happens it is easy to change the mapping in the webserver. Fixing it in the app and then deploying a new version is not realistic to reach people in time, due to the unknown publication process of the app stores.