Strategies for programmatically dealing with API deprecation

[Isaiah Schultz]

I'm curious what folks' strategies are for handling the deprecation of API versions that don't involve a human having to remember to check the sunset dates webpage every few months.

Ideally, it would be great if there was a RSS feed or some sort of endpoint in the API itself to let someone query the deprecation/sunset dates of a specific version of the API. This would allow us to implement a build-time automated check to start flagging builds when a version becomes close to its deprecation date--rather than waiting for builds to start failing on the day of sunset due to client jars no longer containing the version the app is expecting.

Is there an actual good way of accomplishing this today? I'm hoping that I'm just missing something obvious. 

Thanks!

[Peter Oliquino]

Hi Isaiah,

I'm afraid that only this link and our blog are the only resources wherein you can check for announcements regarding each version's deprecation schedule. As for migrating, there is no alternative yet to have done it automatically. Migrations are currently done manually.

Best regards,

Peter

AdWords API Team

[Isaiah Schultz]

I totally understand that migration between versions would still be a manual process. That makes sense to me, and I would expect nothing else.

But what seems odd is that there's no solution available in the spirit of "fail early" and automation.

Is there no one in a continuous integration/delivery environment that is using an adwords library? How difficult would it be to add something similar to what i mentioned in my initial question?

[Nadine Sundquist (AdWords API Team)]

Hello Isaiah,

You're totally right that a feed makes sense. On the right-hand side of our blog, we have links to feeds and email subscriptions. It links off to FeedBurner that has various options to link in. You can also subscribe to AdWords API Announcements to get emails. We also publish the sunset schedule way ahead of time on our sunsets page. We just sent a reminder ahead time in case people forgot about it. I hope that helps!

Cheers,

Nadine, AdWords API Team