[NOTABUG] skills.displayname now missing from XML feed

The change seems to have happened in the past 1-2 days, as I just noticed today right as I was releasing a new RosterMaster version.  Skills no longer have the displayname element in them.  Was that intended?

 

There should have been no change as far as I know.  I will have to dig deeper.

-dan

 

Are you sure you didn't just stumble across a character that hasn't been exported lately?  Not all the characters have all the data depending on how long ago they were exported.  

This character was exported in the last day or two (wife made me knock the dust off Dethdlr):

[url="census.daybreakgames.com/xml/get/eq2/character/?name.first=Dethdlr&locationdata.world=Butcherblock&c:resolve=skills&c:show=skills">census.daybreakgames.com/xml/get/eq2/cha...s&c:show=skills[/url]

This one hasn't logged on in months just so I can keep one around with the old format:

[url="census.daybreakgames.com/xml/get/eq2/character/?name.first=Blondel&locationdata.world=Butcherblock&c:resolve=skills&c:show=skills">census.daybreakgames.com/xml/get/eq2/cha...s&c:show=skills[/url]

As you can see, displayname is there for Dethdlr, but not for Blondel since displayname was added after Blondel was last exported.

Hope that helps,

Dethdlr

 

My test case has a last_update of February 10th, 2012 (character 446677033859)

In that case, it would have been either a change that happened in the last week or so, or it's a consistency issue with the database content (could have been a temporary issue around the time that character last logged in perhaps).

It might be useful at some point to have a data format version returned as part of the data response, so applications will know what to expect out of returend query (since characters aren't automatically exported/updated on every format changes).

This one's no biggie in my case, as I simply modified the code to use the element name instead of the displayname attribute.  But it can be difficult using such attributes when there's no guarantee a given character will be up-to-date enough to contain expected fields/attributes.

 

Actually, Feb 10th was the last time a big sweep was done through the data store implementing a format change and changing all the characters.  This also changed the last_update date.  This is the same thing that skews the account age data.

For those same two characters, check out account age:

Dethdlr, account.age=2846, last_updated=Feb 19th

[url="census.daybreakgames.com/xml/get/eq2/character/?name.first=Dethdlr&locationdata.world=Butcherblock&c:show=account.age,last_update">census.daybreakgames.com/xml/get/eq2/cha...age,last_update[/url]

Blondel, account.age=2785, last_updated=Feb 10th

[url="census.daybreakgames.com/xml/get/eq2/character/?name.first=Blondel&locationdata.world=Butcherblock&c:show=account.age,last_update">census.daybreakgames.com/xml/get/eq2/cha...age,last_update[/url]

They are both on the same account, their account age is off by 61 days, but their last_update is only off by 9 days.  Blondel hasn't been exported in several months.

I suspect you're just catching old data instead of a recent change.

 

I just noticed the same behaviour on equipment_slot missing the displayname attribute on a character last updated on Feb 10th, so looks like it was indeed an update that was made on Feb 10th that made them reflect a last_update of Feb 10th, and not because they had actually logged on that date.  So those characters are simply using an older data format.

Renamed thread topic accordingly, sorry for the false alarm

 

[NOTAPROBLEM]

This is one of downsides of our data architecture.  We may schedule periodic checks of the data to ensure that everyone is using the latest format, but that only works if there is a suitable transformation available.

Going forward, we are going to be using a version number on the character feed if there are any significant changes.  That would help this a great deal.

-dan