Steem API Basics - Part 2: Author, Content, Tags, and Metadata

Making sense of the Steem API discussion payload just keeps on getting easier!

Welcome back to part two of @steemsmarter Steem API Basics. Today we will be looking at the content, author, tag, and metadata information we can extract from the discussion payload pulled from the Steem API.

Where we left off

In my previous post I explained how we can use Ruby and my SteemPostFinder class to pull down the JSON payload for a specific post or comment. If you haven't read it already, it's a good idea to do so. It's pretty epic.

Playing with the payload again

I'll whip the payload out again for reference, but for today we're only going to be playing with the tip.

{
  "id": 33672515,
  "author": "thescubageek",
  "permlink": "steemsmarter-finding-daily-posts-with-ruby",
  "category": "steem",
  "parent_author": "",
  "parent_permlink": "steem",
  "title": "SteemSmarter: Finding Daily Posts with Ruby",
  "body": "Steem is awesome. The Steem API documentation, however, is definitely not. I want to help change that.",
  "json_metadata": {
    "tags": [ "steem", "steemdev", "ruby", "blockchain", "steemit" ],
    "users": ["steemsmarter"],
    "image": [
      "https://ws1.sinaimg.cn/large/006tNc79gy1folmvqw02ej30m80ek773.jpg",
      "https://ws2.sinaimg.cn/large/006tNc79gy1folmvpf65lj30m80bfq4j.jpg"
    ],
    "links": [
      "https://steemit.com/@ashe-oro",
      "https://steemit.com/@crypthoe",
      "https://steemit.com/@steemsmarter",
      "https://steemit.com",
      "https://github.com/inertia186/radiator",
      "https://steemit.com/@inertia"
    ],
    "app": "steemit/0.1",
    "format": "markdown"
  },
  "last_update": "2018-02-19T04:36:15",
  "created": "2018-02-19T04:30:03",
  "active": "2018-02-22T01:01:24",
  "url": "/steem/@thescubageek/steemsmarter-finding-daily-posts-with-ruby",
  "root_title": "SteemSmarter: Finding Daily Posts with Ruby",
  "author_reputation": "92507853048",
  /****....... a bunch of other stuff we'll talk about later .........****/
}

Discussion Content

The following fields contain the basic meat of a post or comment itself -- who wrote it, what tags it has, where to find it via url, and the actual content.

• id - integer
  Discussion id on the blockchain. This useful for looking up the top-level post in a nested comment.

• author - string
  Account name of the discussion author.

• permlink - string
  The url permlink to the discussions (hyphanized title); see my previous post to learn more about how permlinks work.

• title - string
  The full title for the post.

• body - string
  The full body of the post in Markdown format. I use the RedCarpet gem to translate the markdown in this field into the fully rendered post in Ruby.

• category - string
  The top tag under which this post is filed. This affects which tag the post appears under when ranked by Steem's trending mechanism.

• url - string
  URL path (sans domain) to the discussion. This constructed for us automatically as "#{category}/@#{author}/#{permlink}"

• root_title - string
  The discussion is a post, then this is the same as title. If the discussion is a comment, then this is the same as the title of the "root" post, aka the top-level post parent in the comment hierarchy.

• author_reputation - string (large integer)
  The author's reputation stored as a string but representing a very large integer (use .to_i in Ruby to convert it). You'll notice that this number does not match to the two-digit reputations shown on Steemit. In an upcoming post, I'll share the secret sauce for how you caculate the Steemit reputation scores from the author_reputation integer.

JSON Metadata

The json_metadata for a discussion varies depending on the originating platform, the format of the data (dTube video vs standard post, for example), and other factors.

For content created on Steemit, the json_metadata for a post looks like:

"json_metadata": {
  "tags": [ "steem", "steemdev", "ruby", "blockchain", "steemit" ],
  "users": ["steemsmarter"],
  "image": [
    "https://ws1.sinaimg.cn/large/006tNc79gy1folmvqw02ej30m80ek773.jpg",
    "https://ws2.sinaimg.cn/large/006tNc79gy1folmvpf65lj30m80bfq4j.jpg"
  ],
  "links": [
    "https://steemit.com/@ashe-oro",
    "https://steemit.com/@crypthoe",
    "https://steemit.com/@steemsmarter",
    "https://steemit.com",
    "https://github.com/inertia186/radiator",
    "https://steemit.com/@inertia"
  ],
  "app": "steemit/0.1",
  "format": "markdown"
}

• tags - array of strings
  The top five tags for a post; the first tag value is always the same as the category value

• users - array of strings
  List of direct references to user(s) via @ in the dicussion body

• image - array of strings
  List of image urls used in the discussion body; the first image is always set to the thumbnail on Steemit

• links - array of strings
  List of links used in the discussion body

• app - string
  App used to generate the discussion

• format - string
  Format of body content (typically markdown)

Discussions created on other platforms or extensions may contain different json_metadata. The json_metadata can even be an empty hash! Therefore, it's important to use defensive coding practices when working with this field.

Timestamps

These keep track of time-related events. Duh.

• last_update - datetime
  Timestamp of the last time the author edited the discussion

• created - datetime
  Timestamp of when the discussion was created

• active - datetime
  Timestamp of last interaction (edit / vote / comment) for the discussion

What's Next?

Voting! In my next post we'll investigate how to retrieve detailed information about who voted, how much the weight they voted with, their reputation, their voting power, and more.

Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions please ask away in the comments section. If you enjoy this, please resteem and upvote, and remember to follow @thescubageek and @steemsmarter to stay on top of our latest Steem projects.

Until next time, keep on Steemin' Steemians!