implement format=text for the forums (and maybe add format=json)

ID:2158552
 
Oct 11 2016, 1:23 pm
Applies to:Website
Status: Open
Issue hasn't been assigned a status value.
Since you get requests like id:2158520 all the time, i figured a more feasible method might be to create an api and let somebody else do the heavy lifting, then I remembered, you already have a read only api, it's called format=text. Only this doesn't work on the forums =(


If somebody could create an app to handle pager messages and forum stuff, you'd stop getting those feature requests, and the world would be over all better off. (ok. not really) Having a way to get info from byond in a computer friendly format is the first step (and posting messages/pms isn't hard to figure out, http POSTs are already basically computer friendly)
Oct 11 2016, 1:25 pm
Handling pager messages would require a login system. The format=text and format=json stuff is useful, but it's read-only.
Oct 11 2016, 2:02 pm
In modern app dev most of the work is in embedded web views that have interfaces to the app code, so a login system would be as easy as opening a web view to the login page, and storing the resulting cookie to use in api/format=json requests.
Oct 11 2016, 6:49 pm
That's basically how my little Android BYOND app was working, logging you in with a webview and parsing out the forum's HTML to get some data, it was horribly slow and unreliable.

So yeah, +1 to this, especially the part about adding JSON formatting (to the hub entries too!)

My app would basically become instantly super-functional if this were added, especially if it contained notification information and the sort.
Jun 16 2021, 7:54 am
+1 HTML parsing makes everything sad