Important Information on the Future of the EVE API
Greetings capsuleers,
It’s been 14 months since we first told you about the new ESI API, and today we’d like to share a little more information with you.
The ESI API is the latest result of CCP’s ongoing mission to bring you the most comprehensive API access in all of gaming. It is an API that covers all the responsibilities of both CREST and the XML API written with industry standard tooling and built to integrate with industry standard technologies. One year in, it is more comprehensive and we want to talk to you about what’s happening in the next four months.
In our first blog about ESI, released on November 8th, 2016, we stated our goal to reach parity with and shut down the legacy APIs in 18 months. We’re pleased to announce that we have reached the first milestone of this goal, and as of now ESI is at full parity!
This means that applications that are dependent on the XML API or CREST have no barriers preventing their full transition to the ESI API. Team Tech Co. will be continuing to analyze traffic and reach out to developers that are struggling to make the transition before the deadline.
The deadline in question is May 8th, 2018. On this date, we’ll be shutting down the XML and CREST APIs. Team Tech Co does not take this decision lightly, and we want you to understand why we have made this decision.
The XML API has reached a state of calcification, and expanding it further is guaranteed to break unmaintained third-party applications. Additionally, CREST and the XML API are difficult to update, and historically have lagged behind the game client in features. ESI provides us with fantastic flexibility, and enabled us to release the moon mining APIs on the same day the client feature was released.
The ESI API is built to modern industry standards and provides superior documentation compared to both its predecessors. Early on, we acknowledged that transitioning to ESI would require extra effort from the third-party community, but we were and still are certain that it would be a strategic mistake to split the API teams focus by maintaining two legacy systems. By focusing on ESI, we can maintain our current development momentum long term, and keep bringing third party developers the new features they need to make the best applications they can.
The sunsetting of the legacy APIs will impact unmaintained third-party software. It’s important that you understand that any third-party tools you wish to continue using must be migrated to ESI before this deadline. Third party software that is not migrated before this deadline will certainly break after May 8th, 2018. If you’re invested in a particular third-party software, it’s important that you reach out to the developers maintaining that software. However, it’s very likely that we have been in touch with most of the active projects in the community.
We’ve been maintaining strong communication channels since the creation of ESI. This includes active engagement with over 1800 devs in the #devfleet slack channel and over 600 in #esi. ESI has been a great community effort thus far, and we’re keen to chat with you in #esi on tweetfleet slack.
We also have an open repository for ESI bugs, features requests and design decisions at esi-issues.
Now that we’ve achieved parity, we’re enthused to start implementing all the new, fun, fancy ideas that we’ve had on the backlog since we started work on ESI.
See you in the future!
- Team Tech Co.