The new Jaiku API: Problems and solutions

April 3, 2009 by Amr

Almost all applications, modules and social web sites I use stopped working with Jaiku since they moved to AppEngine and introduced a new API based on OAuth for authorization and secure communication of REST requests.

While I was working on updating my favorite desktop micro blogging application, gwibber, to the new API I became aware of 3 important undocumented issues. Fortunately, Jaiku had gone open source which helped me big deal in working with/around these issues.

1. You have to use the "www." subdomain
Meaning your OAuth URLs should begin with "http://www.jaiku.com" not "http://jaiku.com".

2. Method "entry_get_actor_overview" doesn't work
If you try to use that method, you will get back a Python error. Instead, use entry_get_actor_overview_since which requires an extra datetime paramater.
Bug report at JaikuEngine: http://code.google.com/p/jaikuengine/issues/detail?id=80

3. Datetime parameter format is undocumented and ISO format does not work

When you are passing the datetime argument, it should be one of those formats:
'%Y-%m-%d', # '2006-10-25'
'%m/%d/%Y', # '10/25/2006'
'%m/%d/%y', # '10/25/06'
'%b %d %Y', '%b %d, %Y', # 'Oct 25 2006', 'Oct 25, 2006'
'%d %b %Y', '%d %b, %Y', # '25 Oct 2006', '25 Oct, 2006'
'%B %d %Y', '%B %d, %Y', # 'October 25 2006', 'October 25, 2006'
'%d %B %Y', '%d %B, %Y', # '25 October 2006', '25 October, 2006'


Finally
Those are the issues I'm aware of. I will probably post any other issues I encounter as I wrap up my work on gwibber concerning Jaiku. Feel free to post in the comments any issues you might have as well.
I got the feeling that the new API is a bit rusty and not actively tweaked. No wonder why many services are either neglecting it or having trouble getting it to work.

Having that said, since it's open source, everyone interested could now participate in improving the source code which should hopefully end up (at least the important fixes) in jaiku.com.

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