Do I need API key to use StackAuth API?

Question

StackAuth sites doco doesn't mention that it requires an API key and there are no X-RateLimit-Max and X-RateLimit-Current response headers on the request.

At this stage I am passing my API key just in case. Are StackAuth requests envisaged to ever require the API key?

I pass the key by default to any requests, but my guess is No, stackauth is not monitoring keys. — Sky Sanders, Jul 04 '10 at 23:53

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 05 '10 at 03:27

StackAuth does not currently have an API request limit. You really shouldn't be hitting it more than once a day though, for site information, and in accordance with general API guidelines for associated users. Both of which can be safely cached quite heavily.

Eventually some sort of throttling scheme will be put in place.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 05 '10 at 01:21

0

Short answer: No.

If you don't use an API key, then you don't get very many api requests per day (I THINK 200, but I'm probably wrong). If you use a key then it's somewhere around 10,000

answered Jul 05 '10 at 01:21

Matt S.

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If that were the case StackAuth responses would include X-RateLimit-Max and X-RateLimit-Current headers, which they don't. As far as I can tell, it ignores the key request parameter all together. – Igor Zevaka Jul 05 '10 at 01:53
then there be bug – Matt S. Jul 05 '10 at 01:58
And therein lies the question - whether or not the absence of those headers indicates that an api key is not needed. – Igor Zevaka Jul 05 '10 at 02:01
Anyone want to send 10000 requests to see if this is true? :) – Nathan Osman Jul 05 '10 at 02:23

Do I need API key to use StackAuth API?

2 Answers2