Building Custom Calls for Hive - An Example

Context

I wrote a post, where I demonstrated how to build calls for Hive's JSON-RPC endpoints.
To show that this can have certain benefits over using predefined libraries like BEEM, I came up with an example, that can do one particular job faster than BEEM.

To keep the post short and tight, I did not comment too much.
Writing such posts isn't easy, because I never know, who reads them.
For some people everything code is like magic. For others, the stuff I work on seems so far below their level, that they don't even understand my problems.

But this time, I had a reader. Someone who also tested my examples.
Thanks @arc7icwolf!

He tested the examples and then went ahead and tried building his own calls, based on Hive's developer information.
That's exactly what I intended: enabling readers to explore that on their own.

He has since run into problems and replied to me.

Here is my attempt to demonstrate my workflow with this stuff....

get_discussions_by_author_before_date

https://developers.hive.io/apidefinitions/#condenser_api.get_discussions_by_author_before_date

Another great example for how incomplete these docs are.
The expected JSON response according to the docs is: []
An empty list. 😡 ...what a useful call! The response is a constant []

I don't like anything get_discussions - I had trouble with those before.
I raged about this stuff...
The higher level functions, that precompile data a specific way, seem to get worse the more abstract they are. Generally, for beginners, I'd recommend sticking to block_api and account_history_api and other low level, core features.

But I think we can make it work... (I am building as I write)

Parameters

In my last dev post, I used database_api.get_dynamic_global_properties, which takes no parameters. That makes it easy to demonstrate the concept with.

get_discussions_by_author_before_date takes parameters, and again the docs aren't helpful:

Query Parameters JSON: ["", "", "1970-01-01T00:00:00", 100]
Why publish these docs and leave them empty? 😡

Anyways, I assume it takes at least 4 parameters.
3 strings and one integer.
The example from the docs provides more help:

"params":["hiveio","firstpost","2016-04-19T22:49:43",1]

I have done this before, so I have an idea, how that's supposed to work.
Without more context or prior knowledge, that API is unusable like this though.
What anyone can see: the call takes 4 different parameters.

• hiveio (string)- an account name
• firstpost (string) - That's a post identifier
• 2016-04-19T22:49:43 (string) - that's a date in a specific format
• 1 (integer) - that's the batch size, most likely (1 will return a list with 1 item)

Example Parameters

For a test shot, I will simply use fixed parameters.

"params":["felixxx","python-requests-for-hive-json-rpc","2024-09-14T10:00:00",10]

• felixxx - that's me!
• python-requests-for-hive-json-rpc - an identifier of a post of mine
• 2024-09-14T10:00:00 - today, 10 AM (blockchain runs on UTC)
• 10 - batch size of 10.

Test Code

import requests

url = 'https://api.hive.blog'
params_string = '"params":["felixxx","python-requests-for-hive-json-rpc","2024-09-14T10:00:00",10]'


data = '{"jsonrpc":"2.0", "method":"condenser_api.get_discussions_by_author_before_date", '+ params_string + ',"id":1}'

response = requests.post(url, data=data)     
print(response.json())

I am not using f strings. I prefer to use + operator to manipulate strings.
That is not recommended, but I find it easier to read, use and understand.
Generally considered as poor code, though.

That gives me a response, which looks like a list of 'discussion' objects or something.

You can define a start- and end-point by using the date and post-identifier, much like here:
https://peakd.com/@felixxx/hive-api-reference-incomplete
...to collect more data than the batch size allows.
I am a bit too annoyed to explain the details right here...
I am not getting paid for any of this...

Conclusion

I made the function work. It's a useless function, it seems.

I didn't know how this would end, as I coded it while writing this post.
I made it work, but have no real idea what the response data represents.
I have also no desire to waste any more time exploring this call.
I hope it works as an example for @arc7icwolf and helps him along his path.

@vandeberg built this.
It took years, cost a fortune, nobody bothered documenting it properly.
At the time, I was so impressed by these developers.
Now that I caught up a little, I think much less of them.

Most of them went to a different company and work for @andrarchy now.
I am sure they are building great things this time. 🤣