Early access: Corporation Projects
Hi all,
Today we're announcing an early access period for new Corporation Projects routes in ESI. This early access will run for two weeks and be limited to developers in the EVE Partnership Program. Feedback from this group will help us validate the design and make adjustments before going public.
But why?
Until now, most ESI routes have gone straight from development to general availability. The drawback of this approach is that any mistake we make, from typos in fields to inefficient data presentation, can often only be fixed by releasing a new version. Since the OpenAPI specs are already publicly available at that point, apps may already have started using them. Any backwards-incompatible change would then require a new version and us supporting the old version for a while. This is not ideal.
Over the past month, we’ve introduced a new versioning strategy with the X-Compatibility-Date header, migrated our specifications from Swagger 2.0 to OpenAPI 3.0 and 3.1, and refined how pagination works. Combined, these changes represent significant modifications to ESI, and Corporation Projects is the first real-world test of how these pieces work together. We feel that changing the wings on an airplane flying at Mach 2 requires thorough testing. While we’re fairly decent at testing (and breaking) our own creations, it might be time to bring in some other wrecking machines.
Introducing: Early Access for Corporation Projects
To gather early feedback, we invite all EVE Partnership Program members to participate in early access for Corporation Projects. They’ll be granted access to the new routes ahead of time (with an X-Compatibility-Date in the future, accessible only to their ApplicationID/CharacterID), along with the OpenAPI specifications. We’ve communicated separately with EVE Partners on how to request access. This early access will help us evaluate whether we can open it up to a broader group next time; for this first run, we're keeping the group small to keep access manageable on our end.
To set expectations: we request that participants do not make the service public ahead of time, as only the included characters will be able to make requests to these new routes. Feedback gathered during early access may result in changes to the routes before public release.
Early access will start August 7th and last until August 21st. Public release will follow shortly after; more on that at a later date.
Wrapping up
This early access is a way for us to validate our assumptions before committing to a full launch. It’s also a test run for how we might approach early access in the future. If this format proves useful (for both us and you) it may become a regular part of how we roll out new functionality.
Cheers,
Your friendly developers of the EVE Swagger Stable Infrastructure (working title)