Tag Archive for 'yahoo'

Yahoo! to fix GeoPlanet JSON API today

Published on July 2, 2008 in Development. 0 Comments

As I posted last week, a backwards-incompatible API change to the JSON version of Yahoo!'s excellent GeoPlanet API caused the new teaser site for the Singularity web conference to fail.

Today, I got an email from Eddie Babcock from the Y! Geo team informing me that this was due to a regression and that they will be issuing a fix today that will revert the API to its original state.

Looking on the yws-geo forums, I saw that Eddie had posted a longer reply to my forum post, in which he states:

We apologize for introducing a regression bug in our JSON response for the places collection and causing a disruption of your application. The place elements should be part of the place array and not part of the places associative array.

The proper way to access a place in a collection is using result['places']['place'][i].

We will fix this bug in the next release of the API. Since the bug fix will restore the original behavior, it will also break your client-side fix. We suggest that you first look for a place array in the JSON response, and if one is not returned, then use your client-side fix to find the place elements.

I'm also happy to hear that they will henceforth be posting release notes on the Yahoo GeoPlanet API documentation and informing developers of updates on the forums.

I've already implemented the conditional check for the 'place' key in the result so the site should hopefully not suffer any more downtime when they switch the API back.

As they say, regression happens! Thanks for fixing this, guys, and for keeping us in the loop.

Update: Sorry, everyone, the update _did_ break the site again (just fixed it) because another method changed behavior. A call with /belongtos('Time Zone')?format=json used to return just a places array with string indices. After the update which reverted query call return values, belongsto return values also changed. This is actually a good change as it means that the API is now consistent in what it returns but, again, I would have appreciated a heads up.

Yahoo! GeoPlanet API makes backwards-incompatible change, keeps it secret?

Published on June 28, 2008 in APIs and Development. 2 Comments

I just noticed that the Yahoo! GeoPlanet API made an API change to its JSON API that breaks existing apps. (I noticed because it broke the sign-up process for the new Singularity teaser site.)

Googling around, I couldn't find any announcements from Yahoo! about this. I don't know if there's a notification feed somewhere that I'm missing -- if so, I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction. Otherwise, in case any other developres are using the Yahoo! GeoPlanet JSON API and are affected by this, here's a summary of the change from the post I just made on the yws-geo forum:

I just realized that you removed the 'place' array from the JSON object returned from places.q() calls (e.g., of form http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q('city
name');count=0?format=json) and that the returned places object now has the
place indices as strings.

This requires code to be changed from, for example, result['places']['place'] to result['places'] and also requires that numeric indexed loops be changed to use string indices.

It's quite baffling that a change like this (which, really, isn't even necessary) was made and not communicated. Even more so considering that the API is versioned properly (you access it from /v1/), so a change like this should really have gone into (/v2/).

I would love to hear from someone on the Yahoo! GeoPlanet team about the rationale behind this change and where we can find out about similar changes in the future.

I love the Yahoo! GeoPlanet API -- it is awesome and very simple to work with -- but please, guys, pay a bit more attention to backwards compatibility, communicate better, and don't break existing apps! :)

Yahoo! Blocks! OSFlash!

Published on April 3, 2008 in Open Source Flash. 7 Comments

If you have a Yahoo Mail email address, chances are you are being kicked out of OSFlash mailing lists as we speak by the Mailman mailing list software that we use. If your favorite list or lists have gone silent suddenly, this is the reason. Until Yahoo! fixes this or tells me what I need to do to fix it, I would suggest that you use a non-Yahoo email address to subscribe to OSFlash mailing lists.
Continue reading 'Yahoo! Blocks! OSFlash!'

Microhoo?

Published on February 1, 2008 in General. 10 Comments

Microhoo

Typical, I spend the morning with my accountant and the blogosphere erupts with news of Microsoft's take-over bid for Yahoo!

Needless to say, Flash and Flex developers are watching this closely as Yahoo! has traditionally been very supportive of the Flash Platform. Something that will, no doubt, change if Microsoft buys it.

I haven't really given it much thought but initial questions that pop into my head include:

Will the merger be allowed under antitrust laws?

Is Flickr going to be redone in Silverlight?

Is Microsoft doing this to gain dominance in web applications or search or advertising or all of the above?

If Microsoft buys Yahoo!, will Google buy Adobe?

Interesting times.

Bad Behavior has blocked 0 access attempts in the last 7 days.