Goodreads Developers discussion
feature requests
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can we get json for all calls?
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Shawn
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Dec 16, 2010 10:26AM
As I'm working on an app I realized that some responses come back as JSON while others seem to be locked only in XML (such as user/show). Is it possible to get everything a JSON version for all API calls? Mobile apps will benefit from the lighter format.
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I second this request. I'm teaching an iPhone course, and I'm looking to show off web-services with GoodReads. But XML is too much of a pain to teach students an API, compared to JSON.XML is a dealbreaker, having JSON for all methods would be really helpful.
Thanks!
It's a bit of work to add this. Someday it will likely happen, but probably not that soon.If you were using an API for a class, I don't think our documentation is that great either. I think flickr has a much more mature api.
I'm not gonna lie, that is kind of a ridiculous response. As someone just coming in to the Goodreads API, I'm very surprised that your official response is "that's too hard to create, and our API and documentation isn't that great anyways." Last time I checked, JSON encoding an object in Rails (or any other language) is ridiculously easy. If you're in need of a Ruby on Rails consultant, I have some awesome friends who I'm sure would be interested in the work.
I understand that your API is young and growing, but it's 2011 - your API is what's going to expand your user base fastest going forward. While XML is fine and usable, it's unfortunate that JSON isn't available for everything, and I'm sad to say a response like that is not going to have me recommending the Goodreads API in the future.
I'll agree that adding a couple JSON endpoints is relatively easy, but we've got some 100 endpoints to our api, a lot of those have like 50+ lines of dynamic xml code. To do this, I'd expect it to take about 2 weeks of developer time.We're a relatively small company, and thats kind of a big deal. If you guys want one or two json responses of particular methods, let us know which ones and we'll do our best to add them, but currently this isn't a priority.
If you want a fun api to use that has great support, excellent documentation, client wrappers written in lots of different languages, and a variety of output formats, goodreads' api is not the one to use.If you want an API that has the best available book reviews, book metadata, and social book features on the internet, well, then you have no choice, you must use our api.
It's not apples to apples, but in a classroom setting, a student that can successfully use twitter, or flickr's api will be much better prepared to use a smaller companies less developed, more complex API.
Just wanted to chime in with a feature request to offer the review_list XML api (example: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...) in JSON! Would make my life much easier as detailed in this thread: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/5...
+a million for Brad's review/list JSON ask
+1 on requests for JSON across the board especially for review/list. OAuth2 would be nice as well.
It's now been 5-6 years since this was first requested. JSON has won out over XML. Any chance for this to be reopened and moved to become a higher priority?
Echoing these sentiments, and those of https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... — particularly for Brad's comment in this thread.
Just started looking into goodreads api for some fun development, and got hit by XML. since they have not done it from 2011 to 2016, looks like we need to create middle-wares to convert xml to json. Such a widely used site, yet little development seems to be going on inside.
I was just starting to use goodreads APIs. And, I saw this xml blocker.So please provide json endpoints for all apis to users/developers like us.
So it seems unlikely that a Goodreads Dev to answer us :/ ...
Check this blog post https://nocodeapi.com/use-goodreads-apiThis helps you get JSON data for your goodreads account.
