More than a year ago, having launched our API site build.envato.com, we announced that we would be decommissioning the legacy Market APIs. We had planned on a two month grace period, after which any API call against market.envato.com would no longer return useful results. It was a tough call at the time, but we knew that we would be better able to evolve Market without carrying the cost of supporting both APIs.
Well, that was the plan, anyway. In retrospect, two months wasn’t quite long enough, but it’s been well over a year since then; we can be confident that anyone intending to update their API clients has had more than enough time. Like wrinkles, this is not a problem that more waiting is going to fix.
What is happening?
We no longer officially support the old API (anything using the market.envato.com API domain). On January 16th, we will be decommissioning the search API, and we’ll begin to aggressively rate limit all other legacy API requests. In early February, we will begin to remove the endpoints entirely so that they return HTTP status code 404.
This post will be updated as these changes become more concrete.
Why is this happening?
Sean covered this quite nicely in his earlier post, which I encourage you to read. The new APIs are more secure, better documented, more actively developed, more consistent, and we’ll be able to spend more effort improving them without the maintenance burden of the legacy APIs.
The most direct benefits will be to Envato developers, who spend time and effort maintaining the legacy APIs, and we understand it’s frustrating to have to change something that’s working well enough. It’s not a decision we take lightly, but we spend a lot of time on maintenance activities – time we can’t spend improving Envato Market. By reducing that maintenance burden, we can better serve you, our community, by (for example) improving our current APIs and attracting more customers to purchase your work.
We’ll also have more information about how you’re using the APIs, which will help us work on the things you really need in future.
How do I start using the new API?
Over on build.envato.com, we have described the overall process of using our API, as well as how to integrate with OAuth specifically. We’ve also provided a playground area built into the documentation, so you can try out each API call live using your own account.
Many of the endpoints you’ve used in the past are the same in the new API as they were in the old API, so the transition shouldn’t be much more complex than updating your authentication model and changing the domain.
Going forward any breaking changes will be added under a new version, and we’ll slowly deprecate the older versions of the endpoints, so you’re not continually updating your applications. We also have some newer endpoints coming up in the future, and will be transitioning the API to a more REST-like URL structure under new versioned endpoints.
Thank you for your support and understanding. We look forward to seeing all the amazing things you’ll build!
cheers,
David Lee
