On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 10:04 AM, Brian Gerstle <bgerstle(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
My question is: why does the default behavior need to
change? Wouldn't
continuing with the default behavior allow people to continue using the
"rawcontinue" behavior for as long as we want to support it—without making
any changes?
The decision to change the default came out of the same concerns that led
to the improved action=help output and some of the other work I've been
doing lately: We want to lower the barriers for using our API, which means
that the default shouldn't be something user-hostile.
The raw continuation is deceptively simple: it looks straightforward, but
if you're using it with a generator, multiple prop modules, and meta or
list modules, your client code has to know when to ignore the returned
continuation for the generator, when to remove a module from prop and then
when to re-add it, and when to remove the meta or list modules. I wouldn't
be that surprised to learn that more people have it wrong than correct if
their code supports using prop modules with generators.
The new continuation actually is simple: you send the equivalent of
array_merge( $originalParams, $continueParams ) and it just works.
Yes, some of the same could be said for making format=json&formatversion=2
the default. In this case the formatversion=1 output is just annoying
rather than actually hostile (although representing boolean true as a
falsey string comes close), so at this time there's no plan to make that
breaking change.
--
Brad Jorsch (Anomie)
Software Engineer
Wikimedia Foundation