NationStates API (nationdata/regiondata)

[Merni]

Does the Region API messages shard use Unicode? I'm asking because some smart quotes in our region's RMB, which are displayed properly on the site, seem to have been turned into question marks (?) when I use my RMB archiving script, and I'm pretty sure the problem isn't with Python.
Edit: does it use CP1252 by any chance? See this: viewtopic.php?p=37044818#p37044818

[[violet]]

Does the Region API messages shard use Unicode?

Not really, no. It outputs UTF-8 after attempting to reconstruct it from a database that contains a mix of different encodings, support for which were bolted on one at a time as the web became steadily less ASCIIish. So it works fine 99% of the time but occasionally there's a character that dodged proper encoding because it came in through some sub-system that wasn't fully compliant, and can't be output properly without scrambling the stuff that was encoded properly. It's one of those problems that's easy to get right the first time, but very challenging to fix once you have accumulated 18 years of data.

[Merni]

Does the Region API messages shard use Unicode?

Not really, no. It outputs UTF-8 after attempting to reconstruct it from a database that contains a mix of different encodings, support for which were bolted on one at a time as the web became steadily less ASCIIish. So it works fine 99% of the time but occasionally there's a character that dodged proper encoding because it came in through some sub-system that wasn't fully compliant, and can't be output properly without scrambling the stuff that was encoded properly. It's one of those problems that's easy to get right the first time, but very challenging to fix once you have accumulated 18 years of data.

I see, so it's mostly UTF8 but sometimes random characters from other encodings. That'll be pretty much impossible to fix in a script Thanks anyway for the info.

[Katanga Vristaadt]

My telegram client says "403 Client Not Registered For API." It worked fine yesterday. Is anyone experiencing the same problem? Does anyone know how to fix this?

[SherpDaWerp]

My telegram client says "403 Client Not Registered For API." It worked fine yesterday. Is anyone experiencing the same problem? Does anyone know how to fix this?

Sounds like your API Client Key isn't working - first, check that you've typed it out correctly, and then maybe file a GHR to check it's still registered.

[Frisbeeteria]

then maybe file a GHR to check it's still registered.

It's registered. We sent them here for tech support. Mods don't spend a lot of time doing API recruiting. Players are a much better source of troubleshooting.

[HN67]

Is there a way to easily look at who a nation has endorsed? All I have come up with is checking the endorsement list of all WA members in the region.

[SherpDaWerp]

then maybe file a GHR to check it's still registered.

It's registered. We sent them here for tech support. Mods don't spend a lot of time doing API recruiting. Players are a much better source of troubleshooting.

Alright... In that case it's probably mistyped. Check that you've typed it correctly and try again.
Are you using a pre-built API telegramming tool, or have you made your own?

Is there a way to easily look at who a nation has endorsed? All I have come up with is checking the endorsement list of all WA members in the region.

The easiest and quickest way is to download and search the Daily Dumps, rather than make API calls for every nation, although that depends on the size of the region. Anything over 50 members and it's certainly better to just use the dumps. If you then want it to be 100% up-to-date, then make one call to the regional Happenings for any new WA nations and log those, instead of calling for every nation.

Basically, you want to:

1. Download the Daily Dump and search through it for everyone that the nation has endorsed
2. Check the regional happenings for any new WA nations (keep in mind that you have to find every nation who has joined the WA *and* every nation that has joined the region)
3. Then, in one call (per nation from the happenings) check the following:
   • Are they still in the WA? (via the "wa" shard)
   • Is the nation endorsing them (via the "endorsements" shard)

If you don't need full 100% accuracy, though, just use the Daily Dumps and update once every 24 hours.

[Aurum Raider]

Would it be possible to alter the "CATEGORY" field on the cards API to "CARDCATEGORY", and "CARDID" to "ID"?
In it's present form, the output from the API is incongruent with the data dumps.

EDIT: I'm referring specifically to the decklist provided by "cards+deck;nationname="

[Akragas]

Hi all, I am a compete beginner to the API so my apologies in advance if what I am asking is overly simple.

The specific stat I’d like to know about is total number of issues answered (I looked up in the documentation but couldn’t find a relevant shard); I would presume this is kept track of somewhere since there exist banners for reaching specific milestones. Thanks for any help!

[West Leas Oros 2]

I just got an API code for my region, a recruitment one, and I made a telegram template to send to recruits, and now I’m wondering how to send it out?

[Merni]

I just got an API code for my region, a recruitment one, and I made a telegram template to send to recruits, and now I’m wondering how to send it out?

See here. You need to choose a client.

[West Leas Oros 2]

I just got an API code for my region, a recruitment one, and I made a telegram template to send to recruits, and now I’m wondering how to send it out?

See here. You need to choose a client.

Thanks!

[Aurum Raider]

Could a new world/region API shard that contains the content of new RMB posts be added?
Ideally, it would allow one script to compile live RMB feeds of multiple regions without having to make an API request for each one.

If it were to be implemented as a new happenings filter, it would ideally look something like this

Code: Select all

<WORLD>
  <HAPPENINGS>
    <EVENT id="0000000">
        <TIMESTAMP>000000000</TIMESTAMP>
        <TEXT>
          @@nation@@ lodged <!CDATA[message]]> on the %%region%% Regional Message Board.
        <TEXT>
    </EVENT>
  </HAPPENINGS>
</WORLD>


[Ever-Wandering Souls]

I'm sorely tempted to write some script to scrape the finds history of every single trading card for a project; an endeavor that at 10 calls per minute or slightly less, would take the better part of a month of constant chugging. I understand this to be highly discouraged and non-preferable, along with HTML scripting in general. Is there any chance for further consideration of adding an API call for this quite simple and otherwise easily and publicly accessible information?

Thanks.

[Eluvatar]

Could a new world/region API shard that contains the content of new RMB posts be added?
Ideally, it would allow one script to compile live RMB feeds of multiple regions without having to make an API request for each one.

If it were to be implemented as a new happenings filter, it would ideally look something like this

Code: Select all

<WORLD>
  <HAPPENINGS>
    <EVENT id="0000000">
        <TIMESTAMP>000000000</TIMESTAMP>
        <TEXT>
          @@nation@@ lodged <!CDATA[message]]> on the %%region%% Regional Message Board.
        <TEXT>
    </EVENT>
  </HAPPENINGS>
</WORLD>


Adding messages to the world API is certainly possible, but I'd expect it to look more like

Code: Select all

<WORLD>
<MESSAGES>
<POST id="12345678">
<TIMESTAMP>1591893320</TIMESTAMP>
<NATION>testlandia</NATION>
<REGION>Testregionia</REGION>
<STATUS>0</STATUS>
<LIKES>1</LIKES>
<LIKERS>el_test</LIKERS>
<MESSAGE>Hello</MESSAGE>
</POST>
</MESSAGES>
</WORLD>


[Aurum Raider]

Adding messages to the world API is certainly possible, but I'd expect it to look more like

Code: Select all

<WORLD>
<MESSAGES>
<POST id="12345678">
<TIMESTAMP>1591893320</TIMESTAMP>
<NATION>testlandia</NATION>
<REGION>Testregionia</REGION>
<STATUS>0</STATUS>
<LIKES>1</LIKES>
<LIKERS>el_test</LIKERS>
<MESSAGE>Hello</MESSAGE>
</POST>
</MESSAGES>
</WORLD>


Looks good to me - I just went with the format most similar to what already existed

[The Northern Light]

Feature request:

Would it be possible to add an option to the cards API to list the IDs and names of all current collections in a nation's deck?

For example, it could be:

Code: Select all

https://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?q=cards+collections;nationname=testlandia

Ideally it could be combined with deck and info:

Code: Select all

https://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/api.cgi?q=cards+info+deck+collections;nationname=testlandia

One downside of my example proposal that you may want to take into account is that the syntax is very similar to the "+collection" option for listing the contents of a specific collection. Feel free to use some other syntax.

Thanks in advance!

[Valars]

(im new to the API by the way, so sorry if i make a REALLY stupid question here)

Hey, quick question here. Is the python wrapper on the main API page (aka the docs) still up-to-date/useful? was just asking because i saw it not being updated for about a year and the original creator CTEd. If its outdated/useless, are there any good alternatives?

[Merni]

(im new to the API by the way, so sorry if i make a REALLY stupid question here)

Hey, quick question here. Is the python wrapper on the main API page (aka the docs) still up-to-date/useful? was just asking because i saw it not being updated for about a year and the original creator CTEd. If its outdated/useless, are there any good alternatives?

That wrapper should still work (it did when I last used it some months ago), but if you find some issue in it then you might have to fix it yourself since the author has CTEd.

As far as I know there is no other Python wrapper available. There are wrappers for other languages linked on that page, but I don't know how active or maintained they are.

Anyway, depending on what you're using the API for, it's pretty easy to query it yourself without a wrapper, using the requests (more high-level and easy to use but must be installed) or urllib (standard library, low-level) packages. I use urllib in my tools.

Edit: I forgot about sans. It's another Python wrapper, but is for much more advanced uses, and its author seems to also have CTEd. It's used for this Discord bot.

[Valars]

(im new to the API by the way, so sorry if i make a REALLY stupid question here)

Hey, quick question here. Is the python wrapper on the main API page (aka the docs) still up-to-date/useful? was just asking because i saw it not being updated for about a year and the original creator CTEd. If its outdated/useless, are there any good alternatives?

That wrapper should still work (it did when I last used it some months ago), but if you find some issue in it then you might have to fix it yourself since the author has CTEd.

As far as I know there is no other Python wrapper available. There are wrappers for other languages linked on that page, but I don't know how active or maintained they are.

Anyway, depending on what you're using the API for, it's pretty easy to query it yourself without a wrapper, using the requests (more high-level and easy to use but must be installed) or urllib (standard library, low-level) packages. I use urllib in my tools.

Edit: I forgot about sans. It's another Python wrapper, but is for much more advanced uses, and its author seems to also have CTEd. It's used for this Discord bot.

Hey, i tried importing Sans doing (without quotes) 'pip install sans' this threw out a big error, then tried 'pip install -U sans' same error, i even tried the way the python website said to install libraries but still get the same error. i made sure to download all the other libs it needs (lxml and aiohttp) but still cant download with the same error. Do you have any idea on how this could be fixed?

[Merni]

That wrapper should still work (it did when I last used it some months ago), but if you find some issue in it then you might have to fix it yourself since the author has CTEd.

As far as I know there is no other Python wrapper available. There are wrappers for other languages linked on that page, but I don't know how active or maintained they are.

Anyway, depending on what you're using the API for, it's pretty easy to query it yourself without a wrapper, using the requests (more high-level and easy to use but must be installed) or urllib (standard library, low-level) packages. I use urllib in my tools.

Edit: I forgot about sans. It's another Python wrapper, but is for much more advanced uses, and its author seems to also have CTEd. It's used for this Discord bot.

Hey, i tried importing Sans doing (without quotes) 'pip install sans' this threw out a big error, then tried 'pip install -U sans' same error, i even tried the way the python website said to install libraries but still get the same error. i made sure to download all the other libs it needs (lxml and aiohttp) but still cant download with the same error. Do you have any idea on how this could be fixed?

Are you installing it the right way? You should not give the pip command at the Python prompt, but at your system command prompt, as (for example) "py -m pip install sans" (on Windows). If that's what you're doing and it still doesn't work, then I can't help you.

In any case I would strongly suggest against using Sans, since that is mainly meant for multithreaded programming, and is not very useful if you want to do a simple script.

[Aurum Raider]

Could the Cards data dumps be changed to wrap mottos in CDATA tags? Some mottos which contain special characters (I.E Ampersands) trip up some XML parsers.

[The Northern Light]

Would it be possible to revisit this suggestion?

It was brought up here, and several players mentioned they would benefit from the addition. But the discussion soon digressed to including LASTUPDATE in the dumps.

It'd save me a few dozens of thousands of API calls per day, and I imagine it's the same for many other players.

I'd like to bump this request. Adding the SPDR metric in the national dumps would be enormously useful for a large swath of (at least) gameplayers, who frequently need to comb through influence statistics for various purposes (regional security, R/D, WA and endotarting promotion, etc.).

Given that compiling influence statistics often requires fetching the SPDR of entire region populations one nation at a time, it would save both the players and the server a considerable amount of API bandwidth.

The nation dumps already include a few other censuses in various forms, namely CENSUSIDs 0, 1, 2, 3, and 49 (there is also a "PUBLICSECTOR" field for which I could not determine whether it corresponds to a CENSUSID). I understand that at least the first four are "special" censuses (respectively: the three censuses that determine a nation's category, and population). I'd argue that SPDR is also special, given its role in determining the feasibility/outcome of many gameplay actions. Therefore, it should be included in the nation dumps, just as CENSUSIDs 0-3 are.

Hi,

I'd like to bump this request once more. Is there any chance it could be considered?

Thanks,
TNL.

[The Northern Light]

Request

Would it be possible to expand the cards API and include options to retrieve a nation's asks and bids?

Bids in particular would be useful for collectors, who may want to check what cards from a large set they have placed bids on, or to check for bids on cards they already own, etc.

Thank you in advance!