api calls being recognized as automated procedural requests?

[Arpit Mathur]

In the last couple of days my application has started to fail multiple times, being detected as automated procedural requests and redirected to 

http://sorry.google.com/sorry/?continue=http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/token

I end up needing to quit the app and use it later. 

Has anyone any information on this or seen this in their own application. I am looking through my code right now for bugs etc, but any help would be appreciated.

My app is available (for free) here: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/marketplace/index.cfm?event=marketplace.offering&offeringid=18727&marketplaceid=1

Thanks,

-arpit

[Mihai Parparita]

Can we easily identify requests from your app (either via user agent
or by client= query parameter)? If so, I can take a look to see if the
request pattern seems reasonable.

Mihai

[Arpit Mathur]

Unfortunately no, but I can add that today and push an update out.

I'll reply back on this thread soon. Thanks Mihai for the offer to help me investigate the issue.

-arpit

[Arpit Mathur]

@Mihai,

I am still getting the "sorry we think you are a robot" page (http://sorry.google.com/sorry/?continue=http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/token) after about 10 minutes or so of use on average. I have been testing a build for the last few days that additionally sends a source post parameter in the api call that identifies the application as "espressoreader-espressoreader-2.0". This has not been rolled out to the users so right now there is only 1 or 2 apps out there that send the request. If you could look into why the application is getting flagged I'd really appreciate it. I got the message today at 11am and last night around 1am EST approximately if that  helps you at all.

Also I did realize that the usage pattern in my app is slightly different from core Google Reader. In GR, I think you can mark an individual post read or the entire feed as read. In my app, in one view for example, you can glance at 10 items at once and mark all of them as read, leading to 10 sequential api calls to mark the 10 items as read. Is there any API that would mark more than 1 item as read in 1 api call ? The 10 sequential calls may be the reason Google considers my app a robot.

Thanks, 

-arpit

Arpit Mathur

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[Arpit Mathur]

Just to close the thread: This is no longer an issue for me I think. I discovered a bug in my code that made too many retries for the token when it expired. Since it expired after a pretty long time (about an hour), I assumed it was a rate limit exceeded error. My mistake.

I assume there isnt a "mark multiple as read" api call but hopefully 10 calls made sequentially is okay. I havent seen an error doing that (yet)

Thanks,

-arpit

[Dylan Ginsburg]

I thought someone else would respond so I didn't because I don't remember the exact details. But you can mark multiple as read in a single call. Search through the archives of this group and you will see it discussed.