API changes - Get All Reviews

WaniKani API And Third-Party Apps
1

As some of you may be aware, our reviews table is very large and very slow to access. This does not pose an immediate problem for WaniKani until someone tries to read all their review data.

We have been experiencing increasingly frequent issues concerning the access to this data, which is causing the rest of the application to perform poorly or not at all. Unfortunately, we can’t continue to provide access to this data to the detriment of users being able to submit their reviews or do lessons.

Because of these issues, we’ve decided to return an empty dataset from the Get All Reviews endpoint while we evaluate our options and next steps.

I understand there are a few user-scripts that use this data and endpoint, and my rationale for leaving the endpoint live and returning no data is so these user-scripts do not throw errors, but hopefully instead just show the same result where no data was returned (i.e. the case where the user has no existing data).

I understand this will be a disappointment to those of you who use these scripts, but I hope you can understand that I can’t run the risk of the app crashing and preventing everyone from doing their lessons and reviews.

If you are affected by this change can you please let me know which app or script it is that has stopped working, as that will help provide more information for our continued investigation.

known scripts affected by this change (I will try to keep this list up to date):

19 Likes
2

@Kumirei This might have broken reorder omega’s self study feature

1 Like
4

Might be worth updating the API docs while this is in place.

4 Likes
5

I guess this is in response to the site going down earlier

6

I also think Heatmap is no longer working properly either? I’ve done reviews today but it’s not being reflected there. Is this happening to anyone else?

6 Likes
7

At the moment the API docs are still correct in terms to of the data structures. I opted to not update these while we are still working out the path forward. If it looks like this will be around for a longer period of time then I will update the docs.

3 Likes
8

This has been a longer term problem and not a decision I have taken lightly.

9

Looks like Flaming Durdles use this endpoint only to post reviews.

:sweat_smile:

10

Thanks for the heads up. I didn’t expect any app that posted reviews to break unless they were providing some heatmap type functionality.

11

Just noticed the GanbarOmeter script is half broken too, at least my speed is infinite now! Unfortunate as I really like it, but obviously it’s understandable. Hope you get to the bottom of this and find a solution! :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
12

Thanks I have add this to the list of known scripts affected by this change in the original post.

3 Likes
13

Thanks I have added to the list of know affected scripts

3 Likes
14

I have this “Recently Failed Filter” script with all of 4 installs which uses my Review Cache and thus indirectly the reviews endpoint.

15

I haven’t tried it, but I don’t think it should unless you’re using a filter which accesses review data

2 Likes
16

This is super disappointing. I mainly use heatmap / stats to hold myself accountable since wanikani doesn’t have any features like that. It would be nice if they added the feature themselves (streaks + review tracking) before essentially destroying the plugin,

It doesn’t seem like it would be that hard for wani kani to add a streak feature, but im also not a developer.

17 Likes
17

Like I said I am sorry for the disappointment and this was not a decision I took lightly but I had to weigh up the impact of potentially and knowingly breaking user scripts with the issue of not being able to do lessons and reviews at all, which affects every user regardless of whether they use scripts or not. We are listening to feedback and we are working hard to make Wanikani better for everyone.

13 Likes
18

Thanks for the heads up @Kumirei, I have added to the list at the top of the page event though it may not be used.

19

I don’t think us non-developers should make any judgements based on what seems easy to us. Lots of things seem easy when you’re not the one doing the work. :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile: :sweat_smile:

I do love the heatmap though, and hope that the WK crew can find a way to revive it and the other effected scripts!

17 Likes
20

I’m not particularly surprised that this is happening; I expected it to become a problem eventually. I can’t imagine the number of reviews WK are storing at this point. Must be in the billions

7 Likes