I want more information back from an API call but the heavy argument is too much data, options?

Question

There are several API requests that have loads of data available in the response (smugmug.albums.get for instance) but by default the info returned is minimal and the heavy=true option returns too much info. Is there some way to get back a subset of information from these requests?

Answer 1

The 'Extras' argument is what you should use to get specific information back from an API request, its a comma delimited list of values you're interested in. For a smugmug.albums.get request where you want to know the 'Keywords' and 'Public' value you would add the Extras argument as:

...&Extras=Keywords,Public

You can pass in any values you find in the heavy result, here is an Example Request.

And a snapshot of what a piece of that response looks like:

{
  "stat": "ok",
  "method": "smugmug.albums.get",
  "Albums": [
    {
      "id": 5363890,
      "Key": "GxmcTJ",
      "Category": {
        "id": 960,
        "Name": "SmugMug"
      },
      "Keywords": "",
      "Public": true,
      "SubCategory": {
        "id": 59297,
        "Name": "Marketing shots"
      },
      "Title": "SmugMug homepage slide show"
    },
    {
      "id": 4318757,
      "Key": "fqH3fM",
      "Category": {
        "id": 960,
        "Name": "SmugMug"
      },
      "Keywords": "",
      "Public": true,
      "SubCategory": {
        "id": 59297,
        "Name": "Marketing shots"
      },
      "Title": "SmugMug videos"
    },
...