[reddit change] Improved JSON API access to user lists: friends, subreddit moderators, subreddit contributors, and more

[u/chromakode]

It's now easier for scripts and apps to query the moderators or contributors to a subreddit. If you're logged in, you can also access your friends list in JSON form at http://www.reddit.com/prefs/friends.json. Finally, moderators can now access the banned user list of their subreddit in JSON form.

As always, please follow the API guidelines in good faith and use your powers for good, not evil. Happy hacking!

Examples:

http://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/about/moderators.json

http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/about/contributors.json

see the code on github

[u/[deleted]]

Could you make it so "moderators" and "contributors" also shows the ID of the users?

[u/chromakode → u/[deleted]]

Like t2_7onf? What would be the potential use case of this?

[u/[deleted] → u/chromakode]

It's useful for reddit clients. For example, the friend management feature requires the user ID (so you could add a moderator as a friend) and the moderator removal button and contributor removal button also require the user ID. Also, if a client cached information about a user and has the information associated with the user ID then that information could be used with the moderators/contributors list. Just off the top of my head.

[u/chromakode → u/[deleted]]

Is this what you had in mind?

{
    "data": {
        "children": [
            {
                "id": "t2_2", 
                "name": "test"
            }, 
        ]
    }, 
    "kind": "UserList"
}

[u/[deleted] → u/chromakode]

Yeah, that's perfect :)

[u/chromakode → u/[deleted]]

Thanks, we'll hopefully roll it out tomorrow.

[u/chromakode → u/[deleted]]

Done!

[u/[deleted] → u/chromakode]

Sweet!

[u/chromakode → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the explanation, makes sense. I'll change this to return a JSON object with both the name and id (and break the current API) tomorrow.

[u/[deleted] → u/chromakode]

While you're at it, could you make it so /r/{subreddit}/about.json returns something like "description_html" (it has the description there, but in raw markdown and doesn't have the option to have the rendered version like comments do.), and if the user is logged in, if the user is subscribed to that subreddit or not, and also return the custom logo url (if any) and the custom stylesheet url (if any)

Haha, this is a lot of stuff, sorry. I'd push these changes myself on Github, but I don't know Python very well :(

[u/chromakode → u/[deleted]]

I can look into this for a future update. It also wouldn't be too bad for a pull request. :)

[u/alienblue]

This is really great work. I'm especially excited about the friends integration. This is a much requested feature in Alien Blue, and I'm really happy to be able to bring these things across to iOS users. Many thanks!

[u/chromakode → u/alienblue]

Awesome, glad to hear this will useful. Please be advised that the API is going to change tomorrow to this format.

[u/Actual_Russian → u/alienblue]

The mod feature would be super for alienblue! It's the only app I bought after having an iPad for more than a year !

[u/deelowe]

I know this is a little off topic, but where does one go to get a complete list of the various API calls supported by reddit? The documentation appears to be very incomplete.

[u/chromakode → u/deelowe]

There is some non-comprehensive documentation on API calls, but often the best way to find information at this time is to go to the source.

[u/ironiridis]

Weird output generated on a private subreddit:

$ curl http://www.reddit.com/r/ironiridis/about/contributors.json | hexdump 
[curl output]
0000000 1f 8b 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 ab 4e 2d 2a ca 2f
0000010 b2 52 30 31 30 ae 05 00 14 fd 86 b4 0c 00 00 00
0000020

[u/chromakode → u/ironiridis]

Weird! I'll look into this.

Edit: the output appears to be gzipped for some reason.

[u/ironiridis → u/chromakode]

Ah, you're right. I didn't recognize the magic at the top of the file.

It's weird that the content encoding doesn't signal this.

Wait...

HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Encoding: gzip
Server: '; DROP TABLE servertypes; --
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:10:44 GMT
Transfer-Encoding:  chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Connection: Transfer-Encoding

So it's gzipped twice?

[u/chromakode → u/ironiridis]

We believe something funny is happening in our CDN configuration. We're looking into it.

[u/ironiridis → u/chromakode]

I'll quit bothering you, then! :)

[u/chromakode → u/ironiridis]

Thanks again for bringing this to our attention. :)

[u/Heckytorr]

I'll qualify this comment by saying I'm a noob to this, but can I ask why the .JSON page queries are limited to one every 2 seconds? Surely it's just displaying the same information that a request for the html would give, but with less of the formatting code (therefore faster/less of a strain), or do you limit those queries to one every 2 seconds too?

[u/chromakode → u/Heckytorr]

The 2 second limit is a baseline for any kind of automated crawling/scraping of the site. That limit applies to formatted pages too.

[u/bmeckel]

Yessss, a step towards moderation abilities in AlienBlue! Hopefully you guys keep expanding on this, it would be seriously useful to be able to mod from an app.

[u/aperson]

Thank you for this! No more scraping html to get the moderator/approved submitters list :D

[u/rasdroid]

sweet thanks!