Sometime this month the Telstra API started returning results for the sendSMS operation with a country field changed from Country to country.
This results in JSON parsers failing because they are, by default, case sensitive meaning the change is a breaking change for implementations. The API documentation continues to display Country as the field name meaning that the actual API is returning country.
Was this change intentional and announced? If so, could you refer me to documentation for releases?
My apologies Stuart for breaking the API contract and thanks for reaching out on this forum.
We made a change to our API on 20th Dec 2021 to align with Telstra's API design standards but did not follow through with documentation update or did not send a prior notification to our user community.
We will be updating our API spec at the earliest to resolve this issue.
Regards
Vinodh
Hi Stuart,
Documentation has been updated to ensure it reflect the latest API Spec.
Thanks once again for raising this issue.
Regards,
Vinodh
Hi Vinodh,
Appreciate the confirmation but this raises further questions. Was the Messaging API subject to the Telstra embargos in place at the time? I believe 14 to 22 December 2021 was designated as Restricted Work so how was a change like this approved and deployed?
I guess fundamentally how do we stop this from happening again because while we don't use it for high volume messaging we do want the API to be reliable. Undocumented changes 5 days before Christmas would seem to indicate a laissez-faire attitude to the service. Should we be finding another provider?
Thanks,
Stuart
Hello Stuart,
TelstraDev team value your concern and we have brought together the appropriate teams to investigate each step that lead to this issue and ensure that the processes that are in place for all changes deliver the checks required to continue providing a high quality API experience to all our customers.
We are focussing on the stability of the Messaging API functionality so a change was required at this time to our underlying systems to ensure this. We are also planning a series of changes to continue evolving the product and unfortunately this one was included in advance of the wider push leading to the error you received.
We would like to work with you and our passionate developer community to build trust and take ownership that on this occasion, we need to do better.
Regards
Wil and Vinodh