Improvement to the API services
The current API services offered by SmartSimple are confusing in the response our team receives when calling them. For example:
- If there are missing variables in the call, it will respond a 200 - OK in almost all circumtances.
- If there is an incorrect variable (for example, report instead of reportid), the API will reply a 401 error in the body of the response - which indicates the user does not have authorization to that report, when the error is that the variable was incorrectly parsed in the URL.
As our system becomes more connected with other platforms, these issues are becoming a problem with the suppliers that need to connect to SmartSimple.
Victor de la Fuente
shared this idea
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Thanks for this - it's fair, and it lines up with what we're hearing elsewhere.
On documentation: agreed, the current reference page isn't intuitive. We're replacing it with interactive Swagger documentation that follows the OpenAPI standard, so it'll be self-explanatory and browsable rather than requiring you to already know an undocumented parameter pattern.
On access keys per resource x method: this is a direct result of how SmartConnect works today - an admin has to pre-build an individual "function" specifying the action and record type before a developer can use it. That model goes away entirely. With the new REST API, there's no per-resource/method function setup - a developer just calls documented endpoints directly using standard fetch/AJAX, the same way you'd integrate with any modern REST API.
On error messages: I want to confirm specifics with our engineering team before committing to how this changes, but it's a fair point and I'll follow up once I have a clear answer.
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François Lebas
commented
I second this. Error messages are absolutely unhelpful and documentation generally poor.
I would also add to it: the way we have to define a separate access key for each resource x method + manually setting desired columns is insane and unheard of.