What is the "API Key"?

The API key is a key which is unique to your site alone which is used in order to ensure the security of transactions between OnlineGamingDirectory and your site. The API Key should be validated when handling any of the interactions with OnlineGamingDirectory which affect the game play (i.e. updates values, if it just reads values, then validation is less necessary).

The API Key will help to prevent users from setting up scripts that do the same post that OnlineGamingDirectory does in order to reap the benefit of the programs built in. For example, if a site offers points per vote, a malicious person could create a dummy posts that will say that they voted 20 times when really they have not.

This key should be kept private and be regenerated should you think that it has been compromised.

What is the "News Feed URL"?

This is a link to an RSS feed (on your site) where you list all of the updated news for your site.

This helps in order to keep your site information up-to-date and so that the users will be able to see your latest updates automatically.

In order to maintain consistency, your RSS feed will have to comply with the standards. Information about the standards is available here. OnlineGamingDirectory will be using the standard as listed for standard 2.0. The most important part of the RSS feed's contents will be the following section:

<item>
    <title>[[ News Title Here ]]</title>
    <description>[[ News Post Here ]]</description>
    <pubDate>[[ News Published Date ]]</pubDate>
    <guid>[[ News URL ]]</guid>
</item>

What is the "User Referral URL"?

This is the URL which any votes that will be posted to after a user has voted for your site. The post will contain any of the information that was passed in through the query string along with your site's API key.

If when the user visits the site, they have any values coming in through the query string (i.e. ?user=10), this key will also be passed along to your website.

The posted value will always contain the following keys:

• API_KEY - Your API KEY to validate
• REFERRER - The page that referred the user to the vote page
• VOTE_COUNT - The new total number of votes your site has received
• QUERY_STRING - An array containing any information that was passed in through the query string to the vote page

What is the "Site Stats Refresh URL"?

This is the URL which will be retrieved nightly in order to try to update the statistics for your site.

The request will send in your site's API Key as follows:

• API_KEY - Your API KEY to validate

This request will expect back an JSON-encoded array containing any of the following keys. Any keys that are missing will be ignored.

• active_user_count - The total number of users who were active within the last 24 hours
• user_count - The total number of users that the site has
• item_count - The total number of items that the site has
• pet_count - The total number of pets that the site has

Once queried, the expected response will be:

{
    "active_user_count": 10,
    "user_count": 10,
    "item_count": 20,
    "pet_count": 10
}

What is the "Ownership Validation URL"?

This is the URL that the application will use in order to validate that a specific user actually owns the site. This link will not be automatically queried. In order to update the information, you will need to request it through the manage your site page.

The request will send in your site's API Key as follows:

• API_KEY - Your API KEY to validate

This request will expect back an JSON-encoded array containing any of the following key.

• owners - An array of all of the owners for your site and their OnlineGamingDirectory usernames.

Once queried, the expected response will be:

{
    "owners": ["foo", "bar"],
    "maintainers": ["maintainer1", "maintainer2"]
}