Jodel API

Inofficial interface to the private API of the Jodel App. Not affiliated with The Jodel Venture GmbH.

Installation

Using pip:

pip install jodel_api

or using setup.py:

git clone https://github.com/nborrmann/jodel_api.git
cd jodel_api
python setup.py install

Usage

Account Creation

Calling the bare constructor creates a new account:

>>> import jodel_api
>>> lat, lng, city = 48.148434, 11.567867, "Munich"
>>> j = jodel_api.JodelAccount(lat=lat, lng=lng, city=city)
Creating new account.

get_account_data() returns all data associated with this account (censored by me):

>>> j.get_account_data()
{'access_token': 'xxx', 'expiration_date': 1472660000, 'refresh_token': 'xxx', 'distinct_id': 'xxx', 'device_uid': 'xxx'}

Save this data to reuse the account later on, feed it to the JodelAccount() constructor to reinitiate the account. This constructor issues one request to update the location of the account.

>>> j = jodel_api.JodelAccount(lat=lat, lng=lng, city=city, access_token='xxx', expiration_date='xxx',
                               refresh_token='xxx', distinct_id='xxx', device_uid='xxx', is_legacy=True)
(204, '')

Add update_location=False to suppress this behaviour. The constructor will only instantiate an object, without making any remote calls:

>>> j = jodel_api.JodelAccount(lat=lat, lng=lng, city=city, update_location=False, **account_data)

After expiration_date has passed, call refresh_access_tokens() to re-authenticate. If refresh_access_token fails, use refresh_all_tokens instead (this is akin to creating a new account, but preserves the account's data (karma, etc)):

>>> j.refresh_access_token()
(200, {'token_type': 'bearer', 'access_token': 'xxx', 'expires_in': 604800, 'expiration_date': xxx})
>>> j.refresh_all_tokens()
(200, {'expires_in': 604800, 'access_token': 'xxx', 'token_type': 'bearer', 'returning': True,
       'refresh_token': 'xxx', 'expiration_date': 1472600000, 'distinct_id': 'xxx'})

Account Verification

For some functionality like voting and posting (look out for error 478) accounts need to be verified.

With Jodel version 4.48 captcha verification has been disabled. However old accounts will continue to work with version 4.47. But if you ever use an old, verified account with version 4.48 it will become unverified. To this end, use the flag is_legacy=True in the constructor when you instantiate an old account (on by default). New accounts must be created with is_legacy=False.

In 4.48 accounts can only be verified through Google Cloud Messaging. The steps are as follows:

1. Create an Android Account: a = jodel_api.AndroidAccount()
2. Request a push token: a.get_push_token()
3. Send push token to Jodel Servers: j.send_push_token(token)
4. Log into GCM and read push messages (verification_code) from Jodel: verification = a.receive_verification_from_gcm()
5. Send the verification code to Jodel to verify the account: a.verify_push(server_time, verification_code)

In jodel_api this is implemented as follows:

a = jodel_api.AndroidAccount()
j.verify(a)

Tip: If the call is successful, save the account credentials and reuse them later (if you get REGISTRATION_INVALID retry with another account):

account_id, security_token = a.android_id, a.security_token
a2 = jodel_api.AndroidAccount(account_id, security_token)

API calls

All remote API calls return a tuple of HTTP status_code and the response (if possible a dict, parsed from the API response), but might also be a string (error message).

The following API calls are supported (presented without their respective responses):

# API methods for reading posts:
>>> j.get_posts_recent(skip=0, limit=60, after=None, mine=False, hashtag=None, channel=None)
>>> j.get_posts_popular(skip=0, limit=60, after=None, mine=False, hashtag=None, channel=None)
>>> j.get_posts_discussed(skip=0, limit=60, after=None, mine=False, hashtag=None, channel=None)
>>> j.get_pictures_recent(skip=0, limit=60, after=None)
>>> j.get_pictures_popular(skip=0, limit=60, after=None)
>>> j.get_pictures_discussed(skip=0, limit=60, after=None)
>>> j.get_my_pinned_posts(skip=0, limit=60, after=None)
>>> j.get_my_replied_posts(skip=0, limit=60, after=None)
>>> j.get_my_voted_posts(skip=0, limit=60, after=None)
>>> j.post_search(message, skip=0, limit=60)

# API methods for interacting with single posts:
>>> j.create_post(message=None, imgpath=None, b64img=None, color=None, ancestor=None, channel="")
>>> j.get_post_details(post_id) # This endpoint has been deprecated. Use get_post_details_v3.
>>> # This api endpoint implements paging and returns at most 50 replies,
>>> # use the skip parameter to page through the thread:
>>> j.get_post_details_v3(post_id, skip=0)
>>> j.upvote(post_id)
>>> j.downvote(post_id)
>>> j.give_thanks(post_id)
>>> j.get_share_url(post_id)
>>> j.pin(post_id)
>>> j.unpin(post_id)
>>> j.enable_notifications(post_id)
>>> j.disable_notifications(post_id)
>>> j.delete_post(post_id) # Only works on your own posts ಠ_ಠ

# API methods for interacting with sticky posts:
>>> j.upvote_sticky_post(post_id)
>>> j.downvote_sticky_post(post_id)
>>> j.dismiss_sticky_post(post_id)

# API methods for interacting with notifications:
>>> j.get_notifications()
>>> j.get_notifications_new()
>>> j.notification_read(post_id=None, notification_id=None)

# API methods for interacting with channels:
>>> j.get_recommended_channels()
>>> j.get_channel_meta(channel)
>>> j.follow_channel(channel)
>>> j.unfollow_channel(channel)

# API methods for interacting with your user profile:
>>> j.set_location(lat, lng, city, country=None, name=None) # country and name appear to have no effect
>>> j.set_user_profile(user_type=None, gender=None, age=None)
>>> j.get_user_config()
>>> j.get_karma()
>>> j.get_captcha()
>>> j.submit_captcha(key, answer)

The parameters skip, limit and after implement paging. While skip and limit are integers, after is a post_id parameter and will return all jodels that follow that one. The former two paramters seem to be deprecated in favor of the latter, however after doesn't work on all /mine/ endpoints (ie. mine=True or get_my_x_posts).

The arguments mine (boolean), hashtag, channel (both strings) are exclusive. If mine evaluates to true, the other two arguments are discarded, if hashtag evaluates true , channel is discarded.

post_search() is a new endpoint (as of June 17) that isn't yet available through the app. It returns all posts from your location that contain a given string.

You can pass additional arguments (such as proxies and timeouts) to all API calls through the **xargs argument that will be passed to the requests.request() function:

>>> j.upvote(post_id, timeout=5, proxies={'https': '127.0.0.1:5000'})

For unimplemented endpoints, check issue #22.

Error Codes

• 401 "Unauthorized": Your access_token is invalid. Either you messed up, or it is outdated. You need to call refresh_access_token() or refresh_all_token() (check the above section on account creation).
• 401 "Action not allowed": You are using a 4.48 account with is_legacy=True, but 4.48 accounts are not allowed to downgrade.
• 403 "Access Denied": Your IP is banned accross endpoints, just read-only endpoints still work. Effective for 24 hours.
• 429 "Too Many Requests": Your IP is rate-limited. Applies only to one specific endpoint.
• 477 "Signed Request Expected": This library should handle request signing. Make sure to upgrade to the latest version of jodel_api, as the signing key changes every few weeks.
• 478 "Account not verified": Verify the account through GCM.
• 502 "Bad Gateway": Something went wrong server-side. This happens pretty randomly. jodel_api automatically retries two times when it sees this error. If you encounter this status, the jodel servers are probably having issues. Try again later.

Rate-Limits

The Jodel API appears to have the following (IP-based) rate-limits

• max of 200 new account registrations from one IP per half hour
• max of 200 votes per minute
• max of 100 captcha requests per minute

They also hand out 403 bans if you overdo it.

Tests

Nearly all tests in jodel_api_test.py are integration tests, which actually hit the Jodel servers. These can fail for any number of reasons (eg. connectivity issues), which does not necessarily imply there is something wrong with this library. As this library tries to make few assumptions about the content of the json responses they test mostly for status codes, not the contents of the responses (ie. they test whether the API endpoints are still valid).

• For the tests in class TestUnverifiedAccount a new account is created on every run and they test GCM verification, posting and read-only functions

• Tests in class TestLegacyVerifiedAccount need an already verified legacy account and test if it still works. To run these tests you need to verify an account by solving the captcha and save its device_uid in the environment variable JODEL_ACCOUNT_LEGACY. Run j.get_account_data()['device_uid'] to get the value.

  Linux:

  export JODEL_ACCOUNT_LEGACY=a8aa02[...]dba
  

  Windows (you need to restart the cmd/shell for this to take effect, or set it through gui):

  setx JODEL_ACCOUNT_LEGACY a8aa02[...]dba
  

  If this variable is not present, these tests will be skipped.

Clone the directory, install the library and run the tests with

python setup.py test