Thread: XML API HTTP Error (Internal Server Error) on some character names data.lotro.com

I've done a lot of LOTRO community forum searches and even approached Turbine Customer service on t service on this, and here's where they told me to go.

I recently got the API key so that I can access info at data.lotro.com. It seems to work fine on some characters I look up, but not all. I'm certain my syntax is correct, otherwise I would not get any XML information back on the characters that do work.

In this example (where I removed my dev and api key), I see an error. The response I will consistently get is:
The website encountered an error while retrieving
http://data.lotro.com/<DEV>/<API KEY>/charactersheet/w/Gladden/c/Machomachokeeper. It may be down for maintenance or configured incorrectly. HTTP Error 500 (Internal Server Error): An unexpected condition was encountered while the server was attempting to fulfill the request.

In talking to other API developers, they all say 'known issue since September 2011'. In corresponding with Eric Sauvageau, developer of Lotroroster, he confirms this behavior is known and remains unresolved. But it does not seem to be an active discussion, and imho it needs to be.

Does anyone have a newer status? Has anyone from Turbine's Web Dev group stepped up and offered an explanation? Share your experiences with the hope that maybe we can get this resolved.

I just started with the API not long ago, and did not see this error before. But with this char i get the error, too.

Do you have any more informations about this (or other) characters with this problem?

The char is still in MyLotro but with no activity for a long time. Last activity was on 2011/09/01.
http://my.lotro.com/home/character/2...2/activitylog/

Perhaps the error occurs if the character data is not updated for a long time?

Originally Posted by jowarri

IHTTP Error 500 (Internal Server Error)

In talking to other API developers, they all say 'known issue since September 2011'. In corresponding with Eric Sauvageau, developer of Lotroroster, he confirms this behavior is known and remains unresolved. But it does not seem to be an active discussion, and imho it needs to be.

Does anyone have a newer status? Has anyone from Turbine's Web Dev group stepped up and offered an explanation? Share your experiences with the hope that maybe we can get this resolved.

Sadly, the problem HAS been around since the ROI release itself.

The Error 500 message is an interesting one. It is a cover error for many things, but usually it is a "protection (permissions) error" -- that is the data being requested is not "readable" by the requestor. Many?most?all? of the requests generating that error are related to ROI items.

The current status is -- it is even more broken now than it was then; "my.lotro.com" no longer updates (since Update 7).

Again, sadly, it appears that data.lotro.com is an even lower priority than the Lua API, as no one is willing or able to comment.
(Note that neither the data.lotro.com nor my.lotro.com nor your sig pictures, like mine below, reflect T7 crafting.)
Also,

All that said, one can only hope for the future -- waiting till ROR is released or at least goes into beta. From the Update 7 dev notes and comments about "Bag 6" one can only intuit, and hope, that the "engineering" changes necessary to support the 6th bag will "trickle down" to data.lotro.com; my.lotor.com and the Lua world in general.

The good news is, doing a quick check with an XML pull on one of my toons who just changed gear yesterday, that information is correct. And the cache date is current. So, things are not completely broken.

Data.lotro.com DOES need a large "retrofit" -- possibly what the re-engineering of the main database will do. It still lists the "old stats," not the new ones for some "tags." I realize that some of that is because of the need to maintain "backwards compatibility," but without the formulas used, matching the XML pull to the in-game character stats is pure guesswork. It is clear that some of the values (I forget which ones offhand) are calculated "on-the-fly," not stored as discrete values.

One last comment. You will notice that much about Turbine changed pretty radically when Time Warner bought Turbine. Some of it good, some not-so good. The purchase was announced in April of 2010 -- by the Fall, virtually all communication via blogs and the like had stopped. Pretty clear that the Lawyers at TW intend to vet any communication with the public. So, with heavy heart I don't expect any kind of response by Turbine officially and have no doubt that "unofficial" communications will be dealt with severely.

Being a Founder/Lifetime subscriber to both DDO and LOTRO, I expect "big things" from the up-coming ROR release. I just hope that the issues with data.lotro.com are amongst those "bugs fixed."

One further comment...
While I can do XML pulls on my toons. I simply get a blank page on "Machomachokeeper" -- not even an error.

(I'm simply using my browser to do the pull here.)

Originally Posted by Valamar

One further comment...
While I can do XML pulls on my toons. I simply get a blank page on "Machomachokeeper" -- not even an error.

(I'm simply using my browser to do the pull here.)

Which Browser?

Firefox simply display a blank page instead of the 500 error. I'm not sure, if one can configure this in about:config. Try Internet Explorer, it shows the 500 error.