New author_following methods & fanship deprecation

[Nathan]

Hi developers,

The user, author relationship Fanship has been replaced with AuthorFollowing. The API methods for Fanship (create, destroy, and show) are now deprecated, and use author following data. Every fanship has been replaced by an author following with the same ID, so if you attempt to manipulate a fanship via the API, you will actually be manipulating the corresponding author following.

Following an author is the same as becoming a fan, except the author will not be added to the user’s list of favorite authors. We do not currently have plans to support favorite authors through the API.

We are planning to permanently remove the Fanship methods on July 1st, 2015. Please begin to use the new AuthorFollowing methods (create, destroy, and show) by this date. More information about the new methods can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/api/index#a...

Thanks, and please let us know if there are any questions or concerns!

[Nadia]

Hello!
I am sorry I am not writing exactly on the topic, but I have the following quiestion - is it possible to use an xml and upload information about all authors available in goodreads.com. I need it for the website we are developing - bookrar.com
I see this method - author.show — Get info about an author by id. But what is meant by ID?
Thank you in advance!

[Tuula]

Based on author.show documentation the ID is the author's internal identifier within goodreads. (Smallest ID seems to be 9, but finding out which is the largest might need more trickery (& it probably increases all the time as books of new authors are added.))

[Jeff]

Hi Nadia,

Based on your message it looks like you are asking if it's possible to upload all of our author data to your website. This is not allowed according to the Goodreads Developer API Terms of Service.

What you are asking probably violates the following terms:
#4 "Not use the API to harvest or index Goodreads data"
#9 "Not use the Goodreads data as part of a commercial product without our explicit written consent. "

In addition, any data that you get from Goodreads is subject to rule #5: "You may store information obtained from the Goodreads API for up to 24 hours."

[Heather]

Nathan wrote: "We do not currently have plans to support favorite authors through the API."

Hi Nathan, by "support" do you mean that the api will not allow one to add/remove favorite authors from a user's list? Or that it won't be possible to access the existing list of favorite authors? I would hope that "favorite authors" would be supported, since there is a real difference between "favorite" and "following", as a site user.