Documentation about GENI Api

Hi, we believe the documentation is (mostly?) correct but if you want to provide details about the problem(s) you've had, we'd be happy to help you through those and also update the documentation if necessary.

Mike,

If you could add some (simple) example code I think that would help a lot.
Some general info about the data structures and relation between them would also be appreciated. It would make it a bit easier to get started.

Some info about the id's and relation between them would also be useful. Like how do you find information related to a user or to a profile (like source documents).
Also useful would be a list of information that is NOT available though the API.

Thanks Mike for you interest in this question, I will try to summaryze the problems I found so far:

- https://www.geni.com/platform/developer/help is missing some updates, some functions are declared to be only available to pro members but are not. I found as well some behaviours of the API not described in the documentation but available here
- Sandbox for testing is not described and I found it here: https://www.geni.com/discussions/171022
- Data model is not described, actually the reference is outside Geni: https://www.tamurajones.net/TheGeniModel.xhtml
- Error code information are not available
- It looks this discussion link: https://www.geni.com/platform/developer/forum is unattended, you can see questions not answered (actually this one I am publishing is REALLY helpful but it took me almost a year to find)
- "Hellow world!" kind of example for API will be usefull as well.
- SDKs iOs has not been updated since 2011, actually it has one issue declared not answered.

Another example, add_child documentation is not describing how to add another parent to the declaration

https://www.geni.com/discussions/171559

Thank you for bringing this up, and to successfully get Geni's attention (if only momentarily).

To add some of my struggles:

- The most important one: profile id versus profile guid, not explained anywhere in documentation. One can't help but wonder if this is to deter potential developers.
- surname-id for a given surname is impossible to find (unless one loops through 1 to infinity until it's found). Solution: profile data include a list of surname-ids.
- user-id doesn't seem to work. For example, user-####/managed-profiles returns my own managed profiles instead.

I also wonder if it's intentional that the profile data does not include a list of all the managers, only the (single) creator is listed.

To clarify the first issue: what's not explained is how to use guid to call the profile. (Answer: profile-g###########, thanks to Bjørn's comment in another discussion)

As it has become a list of requests, how did I forget this:

Can we have API support to add profiles to a project? (I guess only curators are free to add to any project they want, but so is there limitation to other POST requests.)

Private User or Mike Stangel

Was there ever anything under Revision in the documentation? It's blank now. I wanted to revert some changes I made recently.

Also, much to my surprise I was allowed to make changes to locked name fields (of Master Profiles). Even curators shouldn't be allowed to do that. It seems the only way to prevent that from happening is to check if the profile has a "curator".

Yes, the API currently lets any changes happen which are allowed by the user's account.

Thus, Curators should be VERY careful of using the API; that is why SmartCopy now shows a little "lock" symbol when the field has a 'lock' on it, so the user knows the field's lock status.

As a 'sidebar' : I think SmartCopy (at this time) only looks at / updates the default (i.e. English) name fields.

Is this question https://help.geni.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360018522434-Geni-AP... already in the documentation.

In other words, please answer this question trhere if you know the answer.

Private User, that "question" was posted by me in the Geni Help Center under "Getting Help - Bug Reports" in the hope that it would actually be fixed. It is not in my opinion a documentation issue. Is any Geni staff monitoring those community Bug reports? It was a nasty surprise and took me a few months to figure out after another Geni user had contacted me because of loss of data in some profiles.

Is good that you reacted. I see that you are a pro user. The question should be posted here then a pro user like me or you could make after some debat make report to the Geni staff.. I could see that you are a pro user so I could make the suggestion to make a ticket directly. That Geni help centre is a place where everybody can post and any one can react. But it became a place to dump report in the hope that some of the geni would pick it up.

I agree now it is not a documentation issue. I was hoping that in the documentation was the answer.

So the path is open a ticket and get a ticket and as you are a pro user it will assign to geni staff member and answered by a Geni staff member. On the other remarkes. No comment.