Use ETAGs to reduce API data that hasn't changed
Right now applications need to frequently call and download all the information regarding Shows/Episodes etc to make sure they have the latest into. if you return proper last modified dates inside headers apps could just request the header and skip downloading the data if there has not been any changes.
This should both make apps faster and efficient and also reduce load on your servers and reduce your bandwidth usage.
kay.one
shared this idea
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kay.one
commented
Maybe one solution would be do have different endpoints that exclude user information?
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AdminJustin
(Founder, Trakt)
commented
Yeah, I'll look into this more. That challenge is most API calls have data that changes quite a bit. For example, in show/summary the show data itself might not change, but the top users and the various stats will change a lot. That would change the last modified all the time.
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kay.one
commented
Thanks for the response Justin,
I wasn't aware of those endpoint, but I still think it would be useful if you could return it as part of the header since it makes programming against it much more streamlined.it would also mean the response could be cached by browsers/proxy server along the way if it has proper last modified date.
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AdminJustin
(Founder, Trakt)
commented
Are you aware of these methods that give a list of all shows/movies updated after a certain timestamp?
http://trakt.tv/api-docs/shows-updated
http://trakt.tv/api-docs/movies-updated -
Mspec
commented
I agree this would add a lot more functionality and greatly reduce the need to fully update when nothing has changed.
As noted this would reduce bandwidth not only on the user side but server side as well.