Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

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Where can I find docs for Lemmy's API? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by ieure@lemmy.ml to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml

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The API docs on join-lemmy.org are actually JavaScript SDK docs, not API docs. I want to build an API client in a different language, not write a JavaScript thing using the SDK, and would prefer not to plumb the JS SDK code to understand the API.

Is there somewhere that has a language-agnostic description of Lemmy's APIs?

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[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

How are the docs bad? They exactly match what we are using.

[–] ieure@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Several ways:

They don't simply describe the API. The description of the API is embedded in a particular (JavaScript) implementation of the API client.
There are almost no textual descriptions of anything, and the ones that do exist are useless, because all they do is repeat the name of the function. For example, the full documentation for deleteCommunity() is "Delete a community." In what circumstances may I delete a community? What authentication needs to be performed before this function is called? What response should I expect if the deletion failed?
The actual payload structs all have almost no documentation. What's the difference between DeleteCommunity and RemoveCommunity? Okay, so only an admin can remove a community, but like... what do these things actually do?
There's no place to see everything about an endpoint: its URL, request/response types, etc. It's strewn all over the place, making it harder to find. likePost tells you part of the URL, and the method. You have to click through to CreatePostLike to see the shape of the request body, and PostResponse (and then PostView) to see the expected response... but only on success. For errors, I have no idea. I got down into wrapper(), but it looks like it simply may not implement error handling at all. Figuring out the URL is another slog, this time through buildFullUrl() and the constructor.

In short: The API isn't really documented, and building a new API client requires reverse engineering the JavaScript one.

Before we used to manually maintain other API docs, and it was a huge hassle to keep them updated.

Certainly, writing documentation is work. But the decision to stop doing it externalizes and multiplies the hassle -- it shifts from the Lemmy developers needing to maintain documentation once, to any programmer wishing to interact with Lemmy needing to RE the JS client, every time.

Autogenerating Swagger documentation may be one way to reduce the burden on the Lemmy maintainers.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml -2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For example, the full documentation for deleteCommunity() is “Delete a community.” In what circumstances may I delete a community? What authentication needs to be performed before this function is called? What response should I expect if the deletion failed?

Click on the form, and it tells you exactly what are the required fields, and the output type for what you're getting back.

There’s no place to see everything about an endpoint: its URL, request/response types, etc.

Except for the exact endpoints (which are linked directly in every method description), every single input and output is fully expandable and described.

It doesn't require reverse engineering anything, just click a few links.

[–] ieure@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

Well, I can see that this isn't going to be a productive conversation, so I'm out.

I'll just leave you with this: you have two people here who agree that docs need significant work, and I gave a detailed list of specific things that need addressing. Ignoring half the issues to say, essentially, "you're wrong, just click around" is not helpful.

[–] masterofballs@wolfballs.com 1 points 2 years ago

Forgive me for being to dumb; it just doesn’t seem as clear as something like swagger

You link to some Java script instead of full path ways.

Listing a few curl examples would go a long way to making the api more understandable IMO.

But maybe I’m just to dumb to understand.