EVE General Discussion

I heard there's this really cool thing called the 'API'. I haven't really used it because I'm not able to play EVE much at the moment, but today I actually wanted to use it for something.

You'll notice I have no face, I quite like having no face and therefore don't want to log in. However, I hit a little snag, I would like to see what (if any) items are left on this character. As I said, I haven't really used the API before and it did not occur to me that this would solve this issue; until today.

So I begin hunting for my api keys: no mention of them anywhere whatsoever. No idea how I found the page in the end, buried in the support section of the community site, alas, I digress. So what do I do with this key? The answer is not to be found anywhere near my api key. I end up on various wikis.

Behold, the wonderful wiki keepers, with a bountiful resource of every url you could possibly need to discover anything you could possibly want to know. I get this link to use:

https://api.eveonline.com/corp/AssetList.xml.aspx

Absolutley brilliant. That page returns nothing of any kind. It is listed as the base url, so this is somewhat expected. But, funnily enough, I know nothing (like many others) about the api so have no idea how to get it to work. I do find a list below the url telling me I need: userID, apiKey and characterID. Guess what, I know what 1 of those 3 things are.

Let's cut out the middle part. I have the url for the assets list (which doesn't actually want the user id, but the api key id - I think). I just need a character ID. So I look up character ID and get this:

https://api.eveonline.com/eve/CharacterID.xml.aspx

I mean, do documentation writers take classes on how to write the most useless documentation? Some more searching around reveals that I can add character names, seperated by commas, to the end to return their ID's.

So, here's the crux of the issue. What the freaking hell is the syntax for it? Why is there no real life example where I can just change the name of the character? Maybe I'm being dumb, maybe I'm missing something patently obvious. I tried copying the syntax from other urls. I put in '?' and '=' and 'key=' but none of it works.

Long rant because I get frustrated when something that should be really simple is made really hard for no reason.
Can someone please tell me how to get my character ID?

tl;dr: I'm pretty sure there are no items on my character anyway...

Edit: Ok, I just found an old example of someone doing it however long ago (4 years ago) on the EVE forums. My point still stands, the wiki's were next to useless.

Interesting reply for someone who didn't read the thread.
How do you open your house when it's too much effort to read the numbers outside to make sure you get the right one?

From Technolgy lab forum If you want to learn php this will help. If you don't Theres a book called programming collective intelligence that teaches how to pull api's in python. If you don't want to learn several computer lauguages I'd suggest you just download evehq, theres an asset manager plugin that will do what you want to do. Why reinvent the wheel unless you just like coding?
You probably know how to get your api key by now but... if you don't, there it is.

Yes API sucks cause you have to be familiar with running a server, php,mysql, passing http parameters like a hacker and probably css and html to make it look pretty. They could have given us comma delimited pulls so the masses could drop it into spreadsheets but its CCP. EVE is hard. Just use evehq.

Thanks for the replies. I wasn't sure what 3rd party programmes could be trusted (although I deleted the key after I used it anyway). But now I know!

The thing about learning programming is that it shouldn't be required. I managed it, eventually, without knowing what I was doing by reading about 3 different websites. I could have achieved the whole thing in 10 minutes if there was an existing link to one characters asset list (a purpose made alt) with a link to the page to tell me where to get each of my own identifiers with working links for those too. Therefore it is just copy and paste for me, the layman.

You could have solved the whole thing in two minutes by asking a question at the right spot. What problem do you expect your rant to solve?

Pathetic.

"I heard there's this really cool thing called the 'API'" :D

I would like to be able to use EFT and EVEMon, but I believe they both require an API to work. As I have absolutely zero knowledge of programming, does this mean I am doomed never to be able to use them?

go to www.eveonline.com/api to generate a custom key
copy it

paste it into evemon or eft in the proper field
hit whatever button in those programs you hit to refresh data

no programming needed... the above post is about custom api queries, apps have the hard work done already, you just need to generate a key for yourself and plug it in.

Most important thing to know about the current API - It's read only. No changes can be made from it, so that's the level of trust you have to give, if you're using a third party program.

(There is a R/W api coming. You'll need to trust that more, if you want to use it.)


If you don't want to use a dedicated Eve third party application, you could always use Excel, and a csv that you can grab from my website. The CSV is a lookup table, to go between type ids and type names. Excel can import the XML from the API easily. You then do a vlookup.


All in all, the API gives you a lot of flexibility. But to use it, you have to have a clue how to use Excel/Google's spreadsheet (at the very least) and more likely a full programming language. And you're going to have to be willing to read. If you're not going to use the programs put together by other people, that is.