Expansion for description on event endpoint?

[paul.s...@gmail.com]

Apologies if this has been requested already. I searched and found nothing, but it seems obvious. Given the instructions here: https://www.eventbrite.com/platform/api#/reference/event/retrieve

"To retrieve your event’s fully-rendered HTML description, you will need to make an additional API call to retrieve the Event's full HTML description."

I am surprised there is not an expansion that will allow me to retrieve this description information in the same API call. Would you consider adding one?

On the same note, given the JSON for an event is there a reliable way to determine whether I will need to call the event/description endpoint to get the full description? The best I can do now is look at the version field for "3.7.0", but that does not seem robust.

[Nathan Tinius]

The method in which the description and summary are handled is actively being worked on. The hope is to make an expansion for the description information. Ultimately, we are looking to house the summary and description together in one place. I don't have a timeline on when this will happen but it is something that is currently being built out. 

Best,

Nathan 

[johnhefli...@gmail.com]

Any update on this? Event endpoint now returns fields for both "description" and "summary" but both fields are pulling the same summary text and description is being ignored.

Will this be corrected so that the summary field returns the summary and the description field returns the description?

[Jacob Best-Wittenberg]

Hey John!

Thanks for following up. Yes that is on our roadmap and we're still making progress in this area, however we're, unfortunately, not finished with this migration yet. For the meantime you can continue to use the Event Description endpoint. GET v3/events/event_id/description/

Best,

-Jacob

Eventbrite Developer Support

[johnhefli...@gmail.com]

Hi Jacob,

Thank you for your prompt reply. When description is added to the endpoint, will you let us know here? Or should we just keep an eye on the changelog? Thanks again.

John

[mcpacific]

I agree, this would really be nice to avoid two API calls.

[chris.g...@modea.com]

Jacob,

I was wondering if you had another update on this? A portion of the site I'm currently working on is dealing with this issue and I'm wondering if it's worth my time to implement a workaround (two API calls) or not.

Thanks,
Chris Guilliams

[Nathan Tinius]

Hi all! 

Unfortunately, this is not something that is being worked on at Eventbrite to date. It is something that Jacob and I are advocating for and hope to see this hit one of our engineering roadmaps but we don't have a timeline on when this may happen. In the meantime, if you will go ahead and use the two call method we would be happy to assist you with any issues that you may face. 

Note: If this method ends up impacting your rate limit we can evaluate on a case by case basis and potentially increase your limit to avoid unnecessary tension for you. 

I am sorry I don't have a better offering for you at this point. 

Nathan

Eventbrite Developer Support

[johnhefli...@gmail.com]

Hi Jacob and Nathan,

I'm really sorry to hear this.  My organization uses eventbrite extensively, and I pull all the info into our site via the API.  The big problem for us is that we put an internal code at the bottom of the event description that allows us to categorize and sort events for display on our site, similar to eventbrite type/topic/tags, but of our own making.

At regular intervals we make a single call to pull in all of our event info, and this includes the description, which includes our internal code, and this info lives in our database and allows us to populate our event index, including categorization, until it's refreshed again at the next interval.  All of this with a single API call.

Now in order to get that description (and internal code), I will have to make an individual call for each event, so now instead of one per refresh, it will be 50 or more calls per refresh, depending on how many events we have lined up.  It seems like there has to be a better way.

I thought maybe I could use the new custom tags (from New Create) for this, but they don’t seem to be pulled in by the API either.  Is that correct?  And even if I could, then I’d be left with one system for events entered via New Create (single non-recurring) and a different system for events entered via Classic Create.

Am I misunderstanding this?  Is there a timeline for when all events (even recurring/multi-date) will use New Create?  When that happens, will we be able to get the event tags via the API?  Trying to figure out a plan for keeping this system working.

Thanks, guys.

John

[Frank Neutzling]

Not to pile onto this, but this rate limit issue is definitely troubling for my institution too (Columbus State Community College in Ohio). We are getting ready to release a recreational cooking classes website ( https://mix.cscc.edu, only one event is loaded for testing ), which is going to be announced in a few weeks at an annual gala with 1500 or so attendees. I desperately tried to get our event owners to just use the 140 character summary, but that was a no go, so I've offloaded the long description until someone expands an event. I thought about pre-loading the descriptions, but that's a hassle I don't have time for now, and honestly I'm not sure we won't hit the cap just with the main event data (need the live registration info anyway).

For anyone who doesn't have it, this is the response when the limit is hit:

{

    "status_code": 429,

    "error_description": "You have hit the rate limit.",

    "error": "HIT_RATE_LIMIT"

}

Apologies to the eventbrite devs ( I definitely just acted like a bot to test this, and get the 429 ). I couldn't find this in the docs, and I'm short on time, so I did a bad. Sorry, I had to make sure it was accounted for.

Also @John, we are in a similar situation with the need for custom keywords. I made a post about "keywords in the api" a few days ago, and haven't seen an update. As of now we are incorrectly using the subcategories to sort events.

[johnhefli...@gmail.com]

Hi Frank,

Yes, I saw your other post re keywords and subscribed to it.  Glad I'm not the only one LOL!

Thanks for the rate limit info.  We haven't had any trouble with the limit even with our huge number of events (I work for a hospital so all of our classes, meetings, screenings, community events, etc. are listed).  That will surely change if I have to separately pre-load descriptions.  I agree that it would be a problem.  For the event pages themselves, I'm fine with a second call for the description – it's the index that's got me looking for another approach.  If I could get my internal code (custom tags/keywords) into the New Create summary, that would solve my problem, but the character limit prevents it.

To get around this for now, we are entering ALL events using Classic Create by clicking the link for multiple dates even if it's a single-date, non-recurring event.  If we lose the capability to revert to Classic Create, we'll have an immediate problem.  This is why I asked above about a timeline for New Create rolling out to multi-date events.  Presumably, when that happens, Classic Create will be gone forever, and my whole eventbrite integration will be kaput.

John

[Houston Krohman]

Hi John, last week we increased the character limit on new create so you should be able to use the new create flow and /events/ endpoint for events needing longer descriptions.

Multi-day event support is in development. Also, we recently added better support for repeating events in /events/ and will be releasing a new endpoint to handle repeating events by calendar logic over the next couple months.

[Houston Krohman]

Hi Frank, our rate limits are in place as a security and anti-bot measure. We are able and willing to increase these rates for any legitimate uses. Please contact us with information about your endpoint usage, estimated number of calls/day, and api key and we would be happy to increase your limit. 

[Houston Krohman]

The fastest way to get a rate limit increase is to contact us at apirat...@eventbrite.com with the following information:

1. App/API key

2. Main endpoints being called

3. Expected number of calls/day

[johnhefli...@gmail.com]

Thanks, Houston.  Is there any way to get the new custom "tags" via the event endpoint?

[Frank Neutzling]

So I just went through the process of setting up a batch request for all of our descriptions (we have 36 events as of right now), and it looks to me like batch requests count each of the batched items as an individual call. In other words, 36 descriptions in a batch equals 36 (really 37 it seems because of some status junk) calls. I may have misunderstood, but it sounded like you were saying a batch request with several items should reduce the number of calls placed? My assumption/hope was it would be 1 call.

[Nathan Tinius]

Hey Frank! 

You are correct. We are so sorry for the miss-communication from our end. Batched calls aren't great for reducing the overall number of calls and can actually be more expensive because they require "one call" to initiate the batch. It should also be noted that batched requests currently execute serially on our servers, rather than in parallel, so they are not suitable for speeding up a set of very slow operations but are much better for a large volume of quick operations.

What we can do... If you start seeing an issue with your rate limit or you grow to a stage where you foresee the rate limit causing you an issue. We can increase your rate limit. 

I'm sorry that I don't have a better offering for you at this time. 

Best! 

Nathan

Eventbrite External Developer Support

[Nathan Tinius]

I should also mention batched requests are best when used to save on the added latency of doing several API requests at once - especially in high-latency environments like mobile data - it’s possible to do a batched request to the API and have our servers process all of your requests at once, saving you the cost of several request round trips.

[johnhefli...@gmail.com]

Hi Nathan,

I get that the full event description requires a second call.  Just one more question:  Are the custom event tags (the ones now available in New Create) going to be accessible via the event endpoint?  Thanks.

John

[E Programmer]

Hi Houston, as a developer for a client in dubai we need to query events for an organization. Now there seems to be a bug. In postman, without slash after events, the status=live works as filter.

But without the c# API call fails. ANd I have to dig to ALL events, which delivers a RATE_LIMIT error. Please either fix the bug or give us more space to query 350 events including descriptions and venues? Thanks!

https://www.eventbriteapi.com/v3/organizations/xxxxxxxx/events/?status=live&page=2&size=10

Op maandag 29 juli 2019 om 23:37:52 UTC+2 schreef Houston Krohman:

[Eventbrite Developers]

Hello, 

Eventbrite does implement a trailing slash as part of our API’s structure. While we used to return a 301 redirect for most endpoints, we are now moving towards returning an error message to reduce the amount of traffic to our API. 

Our API has a standard rate limit of 48,000 calls/day, further limited hourly to 1/24th the daily limit. It’s likely once you implement a trailing slash, your total volume of API calls will come down below that amount (removing the 301 redirect). If you require an increase to your rate limit, please reach out to your account manager or post again in this thread.

Best,

Natalie