921210 - Phonebook API Usage Request

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Participation Infrastructure :: API Requests, task)

Description

[Atul Varma [:atul]]

Hi! I'd like to play around with the Phonebook API, much as I play around with other APIs on the Web. You know, tinkering with things until I get inspired and arrive at something that might be useful.

This kind of experimentation is hard to do when I need to file a bug first. It's even harder when I don't even know what kind of application I'm going to make until I actually play around with the API and figure out what's possible. It's a bit like telling someone that they can't have access to a musical instrument until they know exactly what song they're going to play. 

(API documentation alone isn't a substitute here, much as an instrument's manual isn't a substitute for the instrument itself.)

At the very least, some kind of explanation on mozillians.org for why such stringent requirements are in place, even for vouched users--particularly when other platforms like Facebook, Github, and Twitter let anyone make an app--would be illuminating. As it stands, I find myself frustrated by what appears to be draconian controls on user privacy, to the point of actively discouraging experimentation and innovation.

Comment 1

[Atul Varma [:atul]]

Oh hi William! Hope you're doing well.

Sorry this bug request was a bit ranty--I guess I am just easily frustrated by gatekeepers. :/  I'm sure you're requiring bug-filing the Data Safety team for API keys for good reasons, but I also think it'd help if those reasons were explained on mozillians.org, as it's rather unusual for an API provider to have such requirements.

Comment 2

[William Reynolds [:williamr]]

Hi Atul, sorry for the delay and no worries about the rant. I can see how the gatekeeping is frustrating, and that's why we're planning to make the API more developer friendly in the next few months [0]. 

Very soon we'll have our developer and stage environments set up with a complete database that is anonymized (bug 699530), and I think that's a great place for you to play and tinker with the API. Once that work is finished in the next week or so, I would be happy to give you an API key to the developer environment.

Long term we want to make it super easy for developers to get an API key from the user interface, similar to most API providers.

[0] http://hoosteeno.com/2013/10/14/refactoring-the-mozillians-org-authorization-scheme/

Comment 3

[William Reynolds [:williamr]]

Atul, I create an API key to our developer environment and have emailed the details to you. Note that our developer database is anonymized. While the information is scrubbed, you'll be able to use the full API to get a sense of what you can make. If your tinkering sparks an idea, file another bug and we'll get you a production API key.

In the coming months, we'll be working on improving the API key process, so it will be easy for developers to get an API key from the user interface and access production data.