API for results/history?

[JellsAngel]

Hi, I'm not interested (or should I say equipped) to build a game, but I do have interest in gathering and visualizing some statistics. First of all from my personal game history. Is there a way / API to retrieve / download my game history somehow? Thanks!

[sourisdudesert]

Hi

Sorry but there is not. This is also forbidden by our Terms as this is not a "fair use" of BGA and may leads to violate our players pricacy by exporting their datas outside BGA without their consent.

All websites has more or less the same policy. Hope you understand.

[tolcso]

this is not a "fair use" of BGA and may leads to violate our players pricacy by exporting their datas outside BGA without their consent.

Hi!

Can you elaborate on this matter? The problem is with exporting user data to another publicly available site? Or merely using a script to save the data that you can see about other users for personal use is forbidden as well?

I was thinking about making a tool for retrieving the game history of the players in our group to make statistics. I could get the data manually as well, the script would just help to reduce the work. Is it a way to do this without violating the T&C of BGA?

[kamaradclimber]

I'm interested by this question as well.
My purpose would be to build a synchronization tool (for my own use only) to sync my game history with boardgamegeek play history (which tracks my offline games).

[iblancoi]

And what about an API with non-personalised user data?

[ThumbOne]

this is not a "fair use" of BGA and may leads to violate our players pricacy by exporting their datas outside BGA without their consent. All websites has more or less the same policy. Hope you understand.

You know you can do this without risking privacy? There are a handful of ways you can do that (ie. allow people to download their own play history, so games played, who played and their scores or ranks, when it was played):

1. Keep other peoples names anonymous but consistent. That is either refer to them with soft security, by userif only (this privacy to them and their account privacy, i.e. what data can be tied to their userid), or hard security, something like Opponent 1, Opponent 2 ... etc, as long as the same label is used across all games I've played in and my friend Joe is consistently Opponent 6 say it is all good.
2. Seek preemptive permission: That is when accounts are created ask if they mind their opponents having access to play history that includes their userid or name or whatever
3. Seek permission on demand: So if I access an API and request play history you provide hard security as per point 1, but also message all those people with a notification that their play history was touched by me (if I'm using the data you can use my userid) but anonymised and if they click this button they can provide permission to me to download my play history with their user id or name or whatever.

BGG certainly provide an API, and a manage data security around that. It is part of the mission IMHO to support gaming generally and lots of people I am sure would love to conserve their play history across the platforms they use. The BoardGameStats phone app allows upload to BGG for example.

Not least is this interesting because, and here's the crunch, with some effort if we really want to, there's a fair chance we can pilfer all the data we need from your web interface. It's just a lot more work, and demands far more maintenance and so most folk would concur I hope that providing an API that I can access with my username and password to see in a programmatically consistent manner all the data I can see in the Web UI when logged in, adds nothing to the data security concern, it's just a more consistent well defined format for data you already share with me, saving me the trouble of trying to snaffle it from the Web app.

[JayPeper]

I'd be interested in this as well

[SteveV]

Hi

Sorry but there is not. This is also forbidden by our Terms as this is not a "fair use" of BGA and may leads to violate our players pricacy by exporting their datas outside BGA without their consent.

All websites has more or less the same policy. Hope you understand.

an API for your own data should be consistent with the Terms of Service, no? As long as you output userID instead of userName?

[dieterminator]

Sorry, but I am pretty sure, this is not a matter of user privacy, because nobody is asking about exporting other users data! Privacy would be involved if you would forget to use SSL for such aim. So lawyers could argue, what you are actually doing is depriving users from their right to own their personal data and it might be in your interest to offer that choice. Just compare how facebook or other big community players were enforced by law makers to provide a way to download personal data! In the end it would not only be a cool feature, but also a good standing in order not to run into problems other big tech were facing before. And by the way, most gamers would love you not only for that feature, but also for having a stand towards user generated personal data in general.

[Victoria_La]

User can download their own data as game archive, but "API" is not part of the deal.