Figured I’d start a topic with some features I’d love the API to have. Feel free to add to it!
Filtering
The ability to filter the data in the initial request would be immensely helpful (I beleive there is a section for it in the JSON API spec). With a normal client, if you request the current users pledges, you only get the users pledge to the client’s campaign. That’s all fine and dandy, but when you have a multi-creator client, you pull ALL of the user’s pledges… and then must loop through them to find the correct pledge. Needless to say, this can bog things down a bit, especially if there is other data you want to pull in that request. Being able to set a filter on the request would be fantastic in this situation, and others.
Access to Patreon Specifics
Things like weather or not the charging cycle has started. At the moment, we know that the charging cycle goes from the 1st to 5th, and we can account for it, but if this ever changes in the future, developers would need to push out app updates. If there were a way to poll this information, things would be much easier. I’m sure there are other such variables and information that would be useful to poll, though I can’t think of any at the moment.
Request Pledges at a Specific Date
This might be a bit harder, but if we could request a list of pledges from, say, the January 2017 charging cycle, that would also be useful. The Webhooks are useful, but they don’t help if you want to grant any retroactive access to users. Another solution would be some way to pull the charging cycle .CSV or the data therein.
Developer Sandbox
I know you’re already aware of this, but figured I’d write it down anyway. >_<
In such a sandbox, it would be great to simulate dates and charging cycles… Waiting 29 days to test out a feature is a little inconvenient.
Ability to alter user, campaign data
Being able to alter a user’s data. For example, setting their avatar. Along the same lines, being able to alter the description, rewards, goals, etc.
Make posts, send messages on the creators behalf
Similar to the above, the ability to make posts (with links/images/attachments/polls/etc) would allow some really nice integration with other apps / sites. As an example, there could be an app that stores post templates that the creator has made, which they can easily change information in a couple fields and then send out the newly generated post instantly.
Improved Clients & API Keys Page
An improved Clients & API Keys dashboard would be great, especially if additional permissions like those I mentioned above are added. Perhaps some way to choose which permissions the client asks for, rather than only having the permissions added by email. Plus, it would let us see what permissions the client asks for. If I didn’t know that my Patronizer client had multi-creator access, there is nothing on the Clients & API Keys page to let me know that.
Seconding the request for the patron specifics request. It is super frustrating that the only way to determine if a user has been charged is to manually export a CSV… which doesn’t even have correct data right now. I’ll link this thread here from a few months back with the request for a charge status API as a reminder.
Sorry if that comes across as a bit exasperated. I get so many complaints from users who are frustrated they have to wait for the monthly cycle so I can get a CSV, or even worse, have waited weeks and are now in a weird limbo state due to the patron manager reporting $0 lifetime charged issue (see above thread).
If I could just poll an API, or get a webhook notification, to find out if a user was successfully charged and for how much, then none of this would be a problem. This seems like basic e-commerce 101 stuff, how does this still not exist?
Sorry again for the grumbling. I just want my patrons to have a good user experience, and right now, they’re having a really bad one.
Yeah. Don’t worry about grumbling, because well, this is genuinely painful.
I feel bad that I said this in the past, and there’s only so much I can say on a public forum… but… good changes are coming to Patreon’s payments core in 2018, and those will ripple out to the API as fast as we have access to them.
You’re asking good, hard questions. Keep them coming.
Heck yeah on that last point. That came up yesterday in a team meeting and this is great to hear you back it up as important.
As far as write/post/update data. Whew. That’s a whole world. We feel like we’re not even that good at “read” yet! This is a great articulation though. I’d like to hear more about the end use cases and what you’d do with it as they come to you over time and as you work and get feedback from creators.
I think it would be a very beneficial feature to have an API command that will get us the full list of a creator’s patrons in an easy fashion.
Ie, providing a list of patrons with their basic patronage data, including the email they used for patreon. Paged if necessary.
Currently we can already acquire the email of a patron when patron is logged into both patreon and wordpress, for example. But naturally i reckon there can be concerns about easy email harvesting getting the emails of all patrons in one go. As this could have potential of abuse as it is different to acquire the email of an active, logged in patron and acquiring all patrons…
I might be misunderstanding what you mean, but I think this is already possible? I can pull the data for all patrons pledged to a creator that has authorized my app, including email.
You’re getting me too excited for these mysterious new features.
Posting data is a whole new world indeed… but also opens up so many possibilities!
Post Link/Thumbnail/Video Embed Support
Something that would be really neat, though this isn’t exactly part of the API, would be the ability to determine what Patreon shows when a link is provided for a new post. I’m not sure if there is already a way to do this, but if there were some code we could drop in on certain pages we wanted to return some sort of thumbnail or video specifically when included as a Patreon post.
Fun Question, what kinds of things would you as devs want to do if we offered a way to make new posts via the api?
Way to make new posts to Patreon i take it.
This would potentially enable any 3rd party dev to cross-post (or auto post) to a website and patreon at the same time.
Taking WordPress as an example:
The Creator creates a new post at his WP editor, and he posts it or schedules the post.
When the post is posted (immediately) or its scheduled time has come, WordPress can make the post live on Creator’s site, and also contact Patreon API and create a post at the Creator’s patreon feed. This post can be patrons-only, or public.
On Patron side this can provide ease of use since they can choose to follow patron only posts via Creator’s website or Creator’s patreon feed.
On Creator side, this would make things easier for the Creator - now s/he only has to post on his/her website with his or her favorite editor and tools, and it duly gets auto-posted to Patreon without Creator having to hassle with posting.
I say that’s a good idea.
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Update: Moreover this would enable all kinds of things, ranging from auto-posting to Facebook, Twitter and other venues through our own plugins or 3rd party plugins, making the Patreon post go live at the same time with the Website post.
Patron membership changes: Right now we can’t see the exact date a patron paused their account, changed their pledge amount, declined and then reactivated, cancelled, or received a refund. It makes it impossible to see historical changes in pledge values and memberships. Or even seeing historical pledges!
Oh! And more information about payments processed. How much of each pledge can I actually consider earnings.
This is a great articulation though. I’d like to hear more about the end use cases and what you’d do with it as they come to you over time and as you work and get feedback from creators.