topic Re: Fully documented API in Spotify for Developers

Fully documented API

Fusion69961 — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 12:21:28 GMT

The API documentation is very incomplete. Sometimes certain fields of the JSON response can contain null and sometimes the entire response is null but they aren't documented (eg fetching the current playback state when the app isn't open on any device). Is there any (un)official documentation which fully documents what values the response can return?

Re: Fully documented API

Peter_Schorn — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 14:38:56 GMT

You can check out my strongly-typed object model which has been tested for well over a year in my library. It has many properties marked as optional that you wouldn't expect.

Re: Fully documented API

Fusion69961 — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 18:33:13 GMT

Thank you very much for this. Your library has been the perfect reference.

I just had one question since I'm not familiar with Swift:

func recentlyPlayed(

_ timeReference: TimeReference? = nil,

limit: Int? = nil

) -> AnyPublisher<CursorPagingObject<PlayHistory>, Error> {

Based on the return type and (and the fact that you haven't called .decodeOptionalSpotifyObject) - nil is never returned.

PlayHistory objects don't have a nullable "items" field either.

Does this imply that the JSON response never has the "items" key's value as null? Or do CursorPagingObjects/PlayHistory create an empty array for null values?

Re: Fully documented API

Peter_Schorn — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 21:06:54 GMT

If the JSON payload is missing a key or the value for it is null, then trying to decode into an array will fail. It will NOT be automatically decoded into an empty array without special code. I should probably do some testing with a new account to see what the structure of the JSON response is when the user has no play history. This is not a scenario I've considered before, so thanks for highlighting this.