Talk:Requests for comment/Ditch crappy API formats

I would love to kill all formats except JSON, and I have already stated that in this RFC, but it really does not make sense to kill a subset of formats - there is a near-zero cost of keeping them until we are ready to pull the plug, so why bother? --Yurik (talk) 16:37, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Because killing them is easier than continuously talking about them, why not just do it? Max Semenik (talk) 18:05, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, this stuff can be done much faster than API2:) Max Semenik (talk) 18:43, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Comments by BJorsch
I was planning on doing this (along with pushing forward on some of the other stuff in Requests for comment/API roadmap) once I finish the SecurePoll project, so probably August. I also have some plans for backend changes to make the XML format less deserving of death (i.e. changing all API modules so the result data structure is more like json, adding some additional metadata (like what was done in 136799), making all the XML-specific metadata optional, adding general logic for working around other XML shortcomings into the XML formatter), since it's unlikely we can actually get rid of it any time soon.

As for actually doing this, I don't think it can be all that fast. No "kill outright", not even for wddx. To give people time to change over, we'll have to have a rather long period of time (e.g. 1.25) where the formats still work but warn that they're deprecated. A number of the other changes proposed in Requests for comment/API roadmap will need basically the same thing, so I was planning on writing the general idea up in a more detailed manner and getting feedback on that as well as on the specific things to be changed. BJorsch (WMF) (talk) 11:29, 27 June 2014 (UTC)