Missing format=php for connecting with API - needed by piwik-dotnet-api

Webio · December 4, 2020, 10:11am

Hello,

is this normal that format type “php” has been removed from latest matomo 4.x version? I’m connecting to matomo using c# library from here:

(I know it was not updated for a long time but it worked up to latest 3.x version). When you look here:

github.com

matomo-org/piwik-dotnet-api/blob/master/Piwik.Analytics/PiwikAnalytics.cs

#region license
// http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html GPL v3 or later
#endregion

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;
using Conversive.PHPSerializationLibrary;
using System.Collections;

using Piwik.Analytics.Parameters;

namespace Piwik.Analytics
{
    abstract public class PiwikAnalytics
    {
        public static string URL;

        private string tokenAuth;

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you will see that sendRequest method is using:

string url = URL + "/?module=API&format=php";

but API returns that php value for format param is not valid.

Thanks

Lukas · December 4, 2020, 10:58am

Hi,

Yes, it was intentionally removed:

github.com/matomo-org/matomo

Reporting API: remove the PHP serialization response format

opened 02:43PM - 12 Jun 15 UTC

closed 08:02PM - 22 Mar 20 UTC

mnapoli

Major Task Help wanted

A possible response format for APIs is in a PHP serialized string. This isn't go…od for many reasons: - readable only by PHP - prone to not work across systems or across time (e.g. differences between HHVM and the zend engine) - very fragile (e.g. some plugin replace words in responses, this break this format) - not standard at all (JSON, XML & co are more than enough for an HTTP API) We could deprecate it for 3.0 and remove it later.

It is really weird that the C# API implementation is parsing a weird php-internal format instead of just requesting the data as JSON.

That said, you are probably faster if you know C# if you just write a bit of code that fetches the data from the API you need and uses the output than if you try to get this code, which is unmaintined for a long time, to work.