aliekens

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Last.fm web services fromats changed once more ...

23 Jul 2008, 11:19

With the last styling update, a lot of the web services have also been undergoing changes. Unfortunately, these updates were made without warning, and all of my tag cloud scripts are currently suffering from these changes. (for those interested; there's more data made available now, in fact so much that my xml parsers can no longer handle the size of the files (I have noticed artists with 1000 tags, instead of the usual 50), and secondly, there have been problems during the styling update, causing parts of the web services caches at last.fm to become infected by erroneous data, some of which is still persisting, many weeks after last.fm's styling update)

I have therefore decided to take my scripts back offline for the time being, hoping to get them back up and running as I'm able to parse the current formats of last.fm's web services. It shouldn't take all that long.

Comments

  • Cunegonda

    What a pity! So, good work with it

    23 Jul 2008, 11:58

  • brtkrbzhnv

    Well, thanks for all your hard work. Whatever happens next, it's appreciated.

    23 Jul 2008, 12:12

  • Kurama_Youko

    That's sad. Hope your services may come back online soon. Godspeed!

    23 Jul 2008, 14:31

  • wma1999

    I'm sorry to hear this. I always enjoyed your work. Good luck Anthony!

    23 Jul 2008, 17:16

  • Tetisu

    I'm sorry too, good luck ! :)

    23 Jul 2008, 18:32

  • Nethiros

    good luck for you, i really like your stuff

    23 Jul 2008, 19:18

  • aliekens

    An update: after rigorously checking, I've decided that the good old web services (1.0) from last.fm are no longer stable, cannot be trusted, and as a result, can no longer be used for my set of scripts. Recently, Last.fm has released an API (web services "2.0" as they call it, although it's very similar to what they had, but now it is harder to get in because of authentication, etc) which is hopefully more stable than the older version of the web services. Because it is similar, I can hopefully upgrade the PHP spaghetti that is my scripts to be upgraded to this 2.0 version of the last.fm API. So, please, hold on, stuff will get back online. I am obliged to do this upgrade in my very limited free time, so I hope to get the upgrade up&running as soon as possible.

    23 Jul 2008, 20:52

  • Saisuke

    Good luck=) Love your scripts.

    23 Jul 2008, 22:51

  • Orzislaw

    Good luck!

    23 Jul 2008, 23:06

  • Freelancer_F

    Good luck! :))

    23 Jul 2008, 23:07

  • aliekens

    More trouble. As I was forced to upgrade to 2.0, I discovered that the (beta) 2.0 web services do not provide counts for artists' top tags. The Last.fm developers have accepted my request to put this on their todo list. I have also notified them of the problems with the current web services. I hope both these problems can be solved (an updated 2.0 and a more stable 1.0 service) soon. In the meantime, the tag clouds and my other scripts will be forced to remain off line. I'll keep you posted as the story develops.

    23 Jul 2008, 23:09

  • joanofarctan

    Hi - I handle all the 2.0 services. Counts *are* coming back for the toptags service by the end of the week. The problem was they were normalized and I want to use raw counts in the new service instead.

    23 Jul 2008, 23:51

  • Phibrizoq

    Good luck! Looking forward to seeing your scripts back.

    24 Jul 2008, 02:50

  • Alatariels

    I really do hope you'll get back online with them! They were really informative and fun!

    24 Jul 2008, 05:20

  • An0therTry

    Whish you all the best... hoping to have them back soon!

    24 Jul 2008, 10:51

  • DaxisMarr

    Fair enough. Thanks for the hard work so far. :-)

    24 Jul 2008, 12:07

  • Khanatist

    Man, I am a huge fan of your work and wish you good luck with updating the scripts. If the new last.fm results in abandoning the tag clouds, it's just not worth it. Regards.

    24 Jul 2008, 13:26

  • He_Is_Me

    Yep, good luck man! You're doing a great job!

    24 Jul 2008, 14:28

  • jonathanonfire

    god damnit. =[

    24 Jul 2008, 15:57

  • Icesmile

    Thanks anyway for your effort! =)

    24 Jul 2008, 17:33

  • Jonty

    Crikey, this is the first I've heard of this, please contact us and report any 1.0 webservices that are still broken. It's been an awkward transition and we must have missed some!

    24 Jul 2008, 18:37

  • Degreaz0r

    gosh i updated my tagcloud like every week.. :( i'll miss that a lot!

    24 Jul 2008, 18:38

  • aliekens

    Unfortunately, nothing has changed in the last day, and the scripts can not yet be updated or fixed, because the problems and their solutions are beyond my control. For those interested in what goes wrong with the 1.0 services: here's an example. There's way too many tags in the result, and the counts are missing. These counts are necessary for the computation of tag clouds. The 2.0 version does not contain counts, as documented here. I am still hoping for a solution before the weekend.

    24 Jul 2008, 20:39

  • aliekens

    We're online again!

    24 Jul 2008, 21:59

  • bjoerns

    Yeah! THX SO MUCH FOR BEING ONLINE AGAIN!

    26 Jul 2008, 22:02
See all 33 comments
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