Discussion Request for API fix OR Journal improvements

[Cmdr Thrudd]

I'm not sure if the devs check in on this forum but it seemed the right place to put this sort of thing and hopefully they'll see it.

The Elite fans are a pretty creative bunch and we really like to make 3rd party tools to fill gaps in the games systems or help us to plan stuff. We've come up with all sorts of ways to try and get the data we need to make our creations work and it's been quite an uphill struggle.
For many years now we asked for a proper API but to no avail. We finally got permission to use the companion app's endpoint, then in 2.2 we got the journal. These are both good things, unfortunately the companion app is no longer supported, has poor authentication systems and as I recently found out ceases to work if you remake your character. The journal on the other hand doesn't give us the information that the companion app does.

My request is pretty simple. Can we either get the companion app system fixed a bit OR move the functionality from the app to the journal so we can at least have a reliable data system? Having the data feed split across two systems one of which is no longer supported doesn't seem like a good or sensible thing.

 

[wolverine2710]

I'm not sure if the devs check in on this forum but it seemed the right place to put this sort of thing and hopefully they'll see it.

The Elite fans are a pretty creative bunch and we really like to make 3rd party tools to fill gaps in the games systems or help us to plan stuff. We've come up with all sorts of ways to try and get the data we need to make our creations work and it's been quite an uphill struggle.
For many years now we asked for a proper API but to no avail. We finally got permission to use the companion app's endpoint, then in 2.2 we got the journal. These are both good things, unfortunately the companion app is no longer supported, has poor authentication systems and as I recently found out ceases to work if you remake your character. The journal on the other hand doesn't give us the information that the companion app does.

My request is pretty simple. Can we either get the companion app system fixed a bit OR move the functionality from the app to the journal so we can at least have a reliable data system? Having the data feed split across two systems one of which is no longer supported doesn't seem like a good or sensible thing.

Short version: I totally agree.

 

[Cmdr Zach]

Thirded.

The stuff our community comes up with to compliment this game is astounding, extremely useful and adds so much to the game. Most of it should arguably BE in the game. As it's not, please do as much to make their jobs easier and the information they provide richer.

 

[Otis B.]

Sorry you've been caught out by this. I see from the other thread that Support aren't helpful.
Have you tried a bug report about the Clear Save & Companion API issue specifically?

 

[RealPuPpEt]

Agree at 100%
As you pointed me out to this thread, from mine: got the problem clear Save + API old cmdr data!
Maybe i'll send a bug report as Otis said

 

[jgm]

The companion API is poor, no two ways about it. I understand that this is a result of the fact that it's not really maintained, but at this stage it isn't needed for a whole lot of information. Off the top of my head the data it contains that we don't have access to elsewhere is:

• Complete loadouts for all ships, including cargo
• Shipyard information
• Outfitting information
• Market information

Honestly, if we had the following then I believe the companion API could die:

• Dump of all ships on load game
• Dump of current ship information after changes: ship buy/swap, module buy/sell/swap, engineer apply
• Dump of ships available when docking at a station
• Dump of outfitting available when docking at a station
• Dump of market information when docking at a station

This doesn't seem like a massive amount of work to add to the journal, given that the information must already be present.

 

[Cmdr Thrudd]

I must admit I was a bit surprised that they didnt put all that info into the journal and shut down the companion api. I was expecting that they would do that as it would have made a lot of sense.
There are a few things they omitted from the journal that really didnt make sense as the game client already has the info and it would be trivial to log it. Maybe they were worried about log bloat otherwise maybe they just don't want us to have the info. If they're concerned about log bloat then adding a few flags to the config xml files that allows us to turn on or off categories of things to log would have solved that.

 

[RealPuPpEt]

I just want to say that 5 minutes ago i tried ED Market Connector and it seems to work, it does update now and the new commander data is downloaded.
Probably because i had some missing "first discovered tags" when did the clear save and reported the problem (reported the api too)!
I will check if those tags are showed when i will log into the game.

UPDATE: no, my first discovered tags stll aren't there, they're bugged. So i think simply the API updated itself?!