When are API's coming back?

[flowjam]

A couple websites I use to look at my progress have told me API’s no longer work due to the most recent major update. When will these be working again? I’d like to see my stats when I make my lvl 60 post

[Gorbit99]

@flowjam

A couple websites I use to look at my progress have told me API’s no longer work due to the most recent major update.

That’s not quite true.

First, only the review endpoint got disabled, and that was because it was so huge, that it caused measurable performance loss on the other parts of the website, when it was in use. WKStats doesn’t use this endpoint, therefore you will be able to see your stats there. The main thing that’s affected is heatmap, and that has been fixed for a bit in a way, that stores your reviews locally alongside the old, cached data.

Secondly, this was disabled quite a bit after the last major update, here’s the post if you are interested.

[simias]

It’s correct, although it’s still a bummer, especially since as far as I can tell the way the devs have framed it I don’t expect it to come back any time soon.

I can understand disabling such an API as a stopgap measure if it impacts the performance of the website at large, but just leaving it that way long term is pretty lame IMO. Add some heavy throttling to discourage abusing it for instance, I’d be fine loading my stats only once a day or even once a week or whatever.

[Gorbit99]

@simias

It’s correct, although it’s still a bummer, especially since as far as I can tell the way the devs have framed it I don’t expect it to come back any time soon.

I expect that they are thinking about it really hard and whatever method they come up with will be good enough, that it shouldn’t cause huge problems from then on. And if this is the case (which I’m optimistic about), then I don’t mind them taking a bit longer. Most scripts can be made to work somewhat, given they do a bit of an update. Hackfix, but good as a bandaid.

@simias

Add some heavy throttling to discourage abusing it for instance, I’d be fine loading my stats only once a day or even once a week or whatever.

I don’t think that would be an acceptable sacrifice for most people. And because there are quite the number of WK users, and they would all do this “once daily” or “once weekly” api usage at various times, it might not even solve that many issues, and it wouldn’t be a long term solution.

[pm215]

@Gorbit99

they would all do this “once daily” or “once weekly” api usage at various times

That’s exactly what you want, typically – it’s when every user hits the api at once (eg because a script is set to refresh at exactly midnight or whatever) that the server has trouble with the load.

[simias]

Oh yeah I didn’t mean as a long term solution, but it would be better than nothing in the meantime.

@Gorbit99

And because there are quite the number of WK users, and they would all do this “once daily” or “once weekly” api usage at various times, it might not even solve that many issues, and it wouldn’t be a long term solution.

Not having access to their backend statistics I can only guess, but I would be surprised if WK’s DB wasn’t able to serve review stats weekly for all active users, assuming that all requests are not done at the same time of course.

@Gorbit99

I expect that they are thinking about it really hard and whatever method they come up with will be good enough, that it shouldn’t cause huge problems from then on.

Well given their recent track record I’m going to say that I appreciate your optimism and I’ll leave it at that.