i noticed that https://api.inaturalist.org/ now directs to the docs for the v2 API. does that mean v2 is officially out of beta and v1 is deprecated? any timelines for retiring v1 or the earlier API? are there any other changes for the API planned?
(i’m asking because i’m trying to determine whether it’s a good time to convert stuff built on v1 to v2.)
Is this the type of question better suited for iNaturalist Github Discussions that was implemented last week? The welcome message for their Github Discussions.
We’re a small team, and our capacity to actively collaborate with external contributors is limited.
That said, this space exists for a couple of reasons:
- You’re building something that integrates with or extends iNaturalist and have a technical question
I browsed the iNaturalist.org site, and only saw four instances where v1 is being used.
https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/taxa/lifelist_metadata
https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/observations/taxonomy
https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/log
https://api.inaturalist.org/v1/users/notification_counts
I do not know, but the new app iNaturalist Next for iPhone is using v2, so it should work for that kind of interfacing. And the website works fine in v2, except for tours (…)
there’s nothing to suggest that Github Discussions is preferred over discussion in this Forum. in fact, the welcome message says that response in Github Discussions is likely to be slow, and that response in the Forum is likely to be faster.
my impression is that Github Discussions is merely a fallback channel in case there are folks who want to discuss things and for some reason can’t use the forum or e-mail.
@rademacherdan Do you have some comments on this?
Yes, since as noted we are converting our own code to use v2 too.
Hopefully @pleary and @rademacherdan will chime in when they have a chance.
Yes we are considering v2 out of beta, and the preferred API to use going forward. We are relying on v2 for a lot of website functionality, and for most API usage for the latest iOS iNaturalist app. We have not officially deprecated v1 yet, though that might make sense for us to make a statement to that effect to make it clear it is preferred to use v2 over v1. We have updated documentation on the very old website-based API to consider all methods deprecated aside from the authentication-based methods.
The fact is some of our “classic” mobile apps use v1 heavily, so it will not be practical for us to disable it anytime soon. So there’s no immediate need to migrate away from v1 yet. We’ll be sure to make public announcements if we set a timeline for when v1 will no longer be available.
I would recommend using v2 for new work. As for migrating from v1 to v2, I’d say it will be quite a while (at least a year?) until we would be able to disable v1. My preference would be to give at least several months heads up to API users before we do that so API users are not left scrambling to schedule time for updates.
of course, although this may be worth announcing more broadly. there may be folks who may be developers who may not be aware that v2 is out of beta and may still be using old workflows or modules that reference v1.
ok thanks. i guess i’ll just think about how to make conversions for now, and only start worrying about actually making changes if i haven’t converted stuff by the time the new Android app comes out of beta.