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55 Comments
- blink21, on 10/12/2007, -1/+70While it is an unpublished and alpha API, feel free to play with it if you like. We at Digg are working on providing a more thorough and flexible API than what we've put together to get Stack and Swarm to work. We knew whatever we did would be reverse engineered... have fun, but beware... it is certainly subject to change.
- covertbadger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+58The problem with that is, an unreleased or beta API is subject to change, but a published API must not. The company I work for exposes public web services, and the number one DO NOT DO THIS ON PAIN OF PAIN rule is that no changes can be made if they would break existing clients. That means no service name changes, no parameter name or type changes, no refactoring of one service into two or vice versa. A very carefully-managed versioning system is in place to roll out big changes without causing carnage.
In other words, this might cause digg HQ a LOT of extra work if they are still planning some significant changes but lots of people start coding against this reverse-engineered version. - migurski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+31Indeed - don't trust unpublished API's!
The documentation is like a contract, once it's out there, everyone is expected to abide by it. - dupepolice, on 10/12/2007, -1/+29I'm pleased to inform you that this is NOT a dupe. Thank you for your time.
- Anth741, on 10/12/2007, -0/+26Nah, I dont think the digg crew are like that. I'm sure that they welcome it.
- titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24@ aniruddha23- http://digg.com/about/brian
"Brian's responsible for coordinating development activities and figuring out how to implement all of Kevin's fanciful ideas with the development team. His background is largely from working with consulting and systems integration firms, so yeah he's a geek. Brian diggs Apple, Scrabble, quantum physics and science." - webcrumb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22Useful information... it'll be interesting to see what applications the community come up with. A desktop digg client would be an obvious starting point.
- Flankk, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22Now we can reimplement the digg stack in Flash 7 for us using Gnu/Linux.
Why isn't the API open and documented anyway? Seems to me it would only help aggregation of digg news and drive more traffic to the site. - Anth741, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18Weren't they going to release the API anyway? Someone just saved digg HQ ALOT of work :-).
- usefulidiot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14well technically it has been reverse engineered. They took a finished product, decompiled it, and documented how it works. If that isnt reverse engineering i dont know what is.
- ase111, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Well, someone here's had a little too much mountain dew...
- gwinerreniwg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14They are: see comment above.
- defectDS, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12I'll be expecting a Stack/Swarm widget. Five dollars to the first person to make it!
- BostonVaulter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10and it's not a "dup" either
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15lol don't rain on their parade. It's very hard for some people to download sothink and click a button. ;)
- pseudojd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8it sure IS reverse engineering. it's just the script kiddie way of doing it..
- merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6On top of that, stack/swarm traffic alone was enough to bring down the 'digg labs' servers just yesterday. The added load of someone creating some cool mashup may result in more traffic than the API servers can handle.
- dharm, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11reverse engineered? you mean decompiled flash?
- dougfunny, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6mine open in new tabs
- nthitz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You can also specifiy the offset parameter via GET
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7@ usefulidiot - it's about as much reverse engineering as "view source" is.
- ase111, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Tabbed browsing really is the best.
- M2Ys4U, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"(which I reckon Calacanis had orchestrated and hacked their own site)"
*hands treelovinhippie a tinfoil hat* - covertbadger, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5For anyone who wants to poke around in more detail, there appears to be parameter support as well, so you can hit e.g. http://services.digg.com/stories/popular?count=5 to get just the top 5 results.
- kimastergeorge, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7This is actually bad news. This will mean that the official programs will be even slower, and the programs developed now will probably break as they furthur develop the API. That's probably why it wasn't released to the public: it isn't good enough for the public yet.
- DarknessGP, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I can't wait for some really cool apps to come out. Though I want to see some improvement on the current, like being about to open the story from swarm/stack in a new tab instead of a window and things like that.
- rincebrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Mine open in new tabs.
Then again, I'm using the firefox 2.0 beta, which defaults to opening everything in a tab unless you specify otherwise in preferences, so... - dharm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4heh, i commend them for doing it, i never thought about doing it. its just its not reverse engineering =p
- invinciblechunk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4(BETA)
- treelovinhippie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Man, I think Kevin and Jay would be pulling their hair out by the end of this week.
First the Calacanis V Rose diggnation and blog war, then the Netscape hacking (which I reckon Calacanis had orchestrated and hacked their own site), and now the Digg API being discovered.... more pressure to keep potential competitors out.
Eek! - kb9vgr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3error 404
at 404 digs woohoo
actualy not that funny just a smirk - Veretax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2alright thanks for the clarification, could have sworn I saw a similar article earlier hits week or last... unfortunately memory is a volatile thing.
- friol, on 10/12/2007, -7/+8Knowing the slowness of the digg crew, I knew we had to reverse engineer the APIs in order to get some documentation 8-))
- ZephyrWest, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Most of the data returned in the XML file can be retrieved from the digg RSS feed... It would be easier to build an app using the reverse engineered API but I'm sure you could do it with the main RSS feed as well.
Take a look at the nodes with the "digg" namespace:
http://digg.com/rss/containertechnology.xml
And compare it to some of the stuff you see in the reverse engineered API:
http://services.digg.com/stories - M2Ys4U, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1and a "digg this" inside the flash app
- treelovinhippie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Kindly takes that tinfoil hat and uses it as protection against imminent alien brain invasion.
- mohmar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1covertbadger: i agree with your points, but I dont think the digg guys have any responsibility to people who started programming against an API that wasn't already stable and released...I'm sure the developers would just adjust their code if needed...
- estacado, on 10/12/2007, -7/+6Though a desktop app would be cool, but it would really decrease the quality of diggs. People will start to digg or bury a story based on the story's title and desciption only, without ever going to the webpage. Not that it's not happening already, it will only get worse.
- covertbadger, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0@mohmar
That's easy to say in principle, but not so clean-cut in real life. What if, by the time digg are ready to release breaking changes, someone has come up with a killer app with tens of thousands of users, but does not have the time or inclination to port it to the new interface? MS face this problem all the time - a great deal of cruft in the Windows codebase is there because their poor compatibility engineers have had to bend over backwards and add special-case code to accommodate some jerk who used undocumented (and since changed) API features to produce a popular app. Sometimes, turning around and saying "well you shouldn't have done it then" is not a good enough response. - championchap, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1heh, why has this been dugg down?
its quite funny in a nerdy, nerdy way. - pseudojd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1it appears I am the only one who gets that.
- kb9vgr, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Welcome to MDA that's
Mountain Dew Anonymous
now if you'll tell us your problem..
.. what am i gonna do i'm addicted to Mountain Dew - Tialys, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Cool. I cant wait to tinker with this.
- jrizzo, on 10/12/2007, -13/+8Lol, i tried the page (dugg to death at the time) when it had 404 Diggs. Ha!
- xuperuber, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0You could probably do this with a packet sniffer.
- macewan, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1*waiting for them to be published
- benw, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1Wow, I hadn't seen a story about Digg on Digg in minutes.
An API, very fancy. Any self-respecting list of links to news stories needs extensive application development to, um, well, you know. It's obvious, isn't it? You can trackback your tag cloud into it or something. - titlesaysitall, on 10/12/2007, -13/+1Put your hands in the air and put the Mountain Dew down, now step away from the Mountain Dew.
- olaugh, on 10/12/2007, -17/+0Oh cool, you play Scrabble tournaments. Me too.
Gimme a job? - ohsoserial, on 10/12/2007, -23/+5Brian is the site director.
Gimme a job? (insert begging and bribing here) -
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