NationStates API (nationdata/regiondata)

[Eluvatar]

Got rate-blocked by the API (which was expected). The user-facing page for that has a small error:

Your IP address xxxx has sent more than 50 requests in 30 seconds. Access to the API has been blocked for the next 2343321006009 minutes. Please do not send bursts of traffic!

That would be about 4,458,373 years.

Are you going to do it again?

[[violet]]

Should be fixed now, thanks.

[Leppikania]

Can the poll shard be made to have a list of nations that voted in the poll?

[[violet]]

Sure! Added.

[HMS Unicorn]

Added tgcanrecruit and tgcancampaign to the Nation API. These return 0 if the nation is currently blocking all Recruitment / Campaign telegrams, otherwise 1.

This allows API and manual recruiters to better target their messages.

Thanks a lot for this change, it has been incredibly helpful. The amount of telegrams sent by my new-nation API recruitment script that get blocked by category has fallen from about 20% to 5%.

I am curious where the other 5% comes from. I imagine it is nations that turn on the block after my script has queued a telegram to them, but before the telegram gets delivered.

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Hoping that I'm not being too greedy, I was wondering whether it'd be possible to also add an API call that shows whether a recruitment telegram will be blocked because of "previous recruitment too recent".

This would help greatly reduce wasted telegrams for regions that combine more than one types of recruitment (any combination of stamps, API, and manual); or for regions that use the API to telegram nations from different but possibly overlapping lists of nations (e.g., newly founded nations, and nations that just joined the WA).

The API call could take the form of an optional argument to the existing TGCANRECRUIT call. For instance,

Code: Select all

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?nation=hms_unicorn&q=tgcanrecruit;fromregion=europeia

would return 0 if a recruitment for Europeia sent to HMS Unicorn would be blocked because of "previous recruitment too recent", and 1 otherwise. If the optional argument were skipped, the call would work same as now.

[Trotterdam]

I am curious where the other 5% comes from. I imagine it is nations that turn on the block after my script has queued a telegram to them, but before the telegram gets delivered.

The nation could also be blocking "some"/"most" telegrams, rather than all, and has received a telegram in the same category from someone else recently enough for yours to get rejected.

[HMS Unicorn]

Good point, I always forget about that intermediate option. That makes the 5% seem more reasonable

[[violet]]

Hoping that I'm not being too greedy, I was wondering whether it'd be possible to also add an API call that shows whether a recruitment telegram will be blocked because of "previous recruitment too recent".

Sure thing! Added in testing, needs to wait on some other Telegram stuff before it can go live in production. But should work soonish, using the "from" parameter. You could start using that today, since it will just be ignored until it's supported.

Code: Select all

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?nation=hms_unicorn&q=tgcanrecruit;from=europeia

[Zacherie]

Should be fixed now, thanks.

(A little late) Fixed it for me, thanks.

[TRUMPALUMPUS]

Hey guys, I've been making a website for our region between myself and a number of friends. I've been trying to find a way to import the population of each nation and refresh daily with population increase, but haven't found anything promising. Any idea on how I can?

[Floor 448]

Hey guys, I've been making a website for our region between myself and a number of friends. I've been trying to find a way to import the population of each nation and refresh daily with population increase, but haven't found anything promising. Any idea on how I can?

Do you have a programming language in mind? (Were you even going to make it yourself?) How many nations are in question?

[Trotterdam]

Hey guys, I've been making a website for our region between myself and a number of friends. I've been trying to find a way to import the population of each nation and refresh daily with population increase, but haven't found anything promising. Any idea on how I can?

If you need to process a large number of nations, you may need to download the daily data dumps and parse them for the information you're looking for.

If you only need to follow a smaller number of nations, it's easier to make several calls to http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?q=population&nation=trumpalumpus (replacing the nation name each time).

[HMS Unicorn]

Sure thing! Added in testing, needs to wait on some other Telegram stuff before it can go live in production. But should work soonish, using the "from" parameter. You could start using that today, since it will just be ignored until it's supported.

Code: Select all

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?nation=hms_unicorn&q=tgcanrecruit;from=europeia

Excellent, thanks a lot for adding this so fast!

One question for clarification: Does the new code check for both telegrams being blocked in preferences and telegrams being blocked from "previous recruitment too recent"? Or would I need to do two separate API calls, one with and one without the "from" argument, to check for both of these conditions?

[Nexexen]

One can get sensibilities from the API, but is there any way to get a shard for the tax descriptor as well--"flat", "average", "average, and even higher for the wealthy", "unheard of" etcetera? (Not sure if there are any other possibilities there...)

On a related note, would it be possible to get a shard for the government descriptors as well--"minute"/"tiny"/"relatively small"/"medium-sized"/"large"/etcetera, "outspoken", "community-minded", "socially-minded", "moralistic", "liberal", "corrupt", "pro-business", "well-organized", etcetera?

Thanks for any help on this.

[Greater Tern]

One can get sensibilities from the API, but is there any way to get a shard for the tax descriptor as well--"flat", "average", "average, and even higher for the wealthy", "unheard of" etcetera? (Not sure if there are any other possibilities there...)

On a related note, would it be possible to get a shard for the government descriptors as well--"minute"/"tiny"/"relatively small"/"medium-sized"/"large"/etcetera, "outspoken", "community-minded", "socially-minded", "moralistic", "liberal", "corrupt", "pro-business", "well-organized", etcetera?

Thanks for any help on this.

I don't think the tax descriptors are available as a shard (good idea for a new one though!), but you can get the government descriptor from the govtdesc shard:

https://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/ap ... q=govtdesc

[[violet]]

One question for clarification: Does the new code check for both telegrams being blocked in preferences and telegrams being blocked from "previous recruitment too recent"? Or would I need to do two separate API calls, one with and one without the "from" argument, to check for both of these conditions?

The "tgcanrecruit" shard always checks whether the nation is blocking Recruitment Telegrams. If you supply the optional parameter "from=<REGION>", it additionally checks whether messages from that region would be blocked under "Previous Recruitment Too Recent". (Or will, once it goes live.)

[TRUMPALUMPUS]

Hey guys, I've been making a website for our region between myself and a number of friends. I've been trying to find a way to import the population of each nation and refresh daily with population increase, but haven't found anything promising. Any idea on how I can?

Do you have a programming language in mind? (Were you even going to make it yourself?) How many nations are in question?

Honestly, I have no preference as to what language, and there's a steady population of 17 nations in our region.

[HMS Unicorn]

The "tgcanrecruit" shard always checks whether the nation is blocking Recruitment Telegrams. If you supply the optional parameter "from=<REGION>", it additionally checks whether messages from that region would be blocked under "Previous Recruitment Too Recent". (Or will, once it goes live.)

Thanks. That makes sense, as that way you can check whether your TG will be blocked, for any reason, with a single API call, rather than having to make two of them.

I've gone ahead and added this check to my scripts.

[Sandaoguo]

I'm currently working on scraping influence data from The South Pacific (and potentially other regions). I'm using a token bucket algorithm to limit API calls, and this so far is working. (Though NS API's rate limiter is very sensitive, so I had to limit outgoing API calls to less than 50 per 30 seconds, because the algorithm was leading to 50 calls taking about a tenth of a second longer than 30 seconds, which led to a block. ) My question is: is it preferable on NS's end to make calls in bursts of 50, then wait so many seconds, or to space out individual calls every 1.x seconds like the algorithm currently does? To collect the influence data on all nations in TSP, I have to make several hundred calls.

[[violet]]

My question is: is it preferable on NS's end to make calls in bursts of 50, then wait so many seconds, or to space out individual calls every 1.x seconds like the algorithm currently does? To collect the influence data on all nations in TSP, I have to make several hundred calls.

Spaced out is better.

[HMS Unicorn]

Would it be possible to add an API call that, given a telegram ID, returns its type (recruitment, campaign, none)?

I run a service that allows members of the region to submit a telegram ID, key, and list of nations; then sends copies of this telegram to these nations using the regional client key.

The page allows its users to specify whether the telegram is recruitment or not, and uses this to determine the rate at which the telegrams will be sent (1 every 30 or 180 seconds).

However, I have found that users often make mistakes, resulting either in the client being blocked for long periods of time, or in enormous amounts of wasted telegram bandwidth (unnecessarily setting recruitment for a 1000-nation telegram job...).

These issues would be resolved if there were an API call to determine the type of telegram automatically and set the rate limit accordingly.

Thanks in advance.

[[violet]]

Hoping that I'm not being too greedy, I was wondering whether it'd be possible to also add an API call that shows whether a recruitment telegram will be blocked because of "previous recruitment too recent".

Sure thing! Added in testing, needs to wait on some other Telegram stuff before it can go live in production. But should work soonish, using the "from" parameter. You could start using that today, since it will just be ignored until it's supported.

Code: Select all

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?nation=hms_unicorn&q=tgcanrecruit;from=europeia

Now implemented.

[HMS Unicorn]

Thanks! Tested on my end, seems to work fine so far.

[Imperium Anglorum]

A few questions, I hope they aren't too much to ask.

Is there any way to get the BBCode that made the GA resolution? Or, if possible, at least preserve line breaks.

Would it be possible to trawl passed resolutions using the API? I maintain the Passed Resolutions thread. It would be much easier to get passed resolutions from the API than it is to copy and paste them into my parser as I do now, manually.

And finally, is there an established format in which the API information is saved? For example, if one calls the region API, you get nation names separated by colons instead of commas.

[HMS Unicorn]

Is there any way to get the BBCode that made the GA resolution? Or, if possible, at least preserve line breaks.

Would it be possible to trawl passed resolutions using the API? I maintain the Passed Resolutions thread. It would be much easier to get passed resolutions from the API than it is to copy and paste them into my parser as I do now, manually.

This old feature request is related to this.