flattr4j

Today flattr4j v2.3 was released. It's a minor release that brings better support for authentication and logging on Android devices.

Today flattr4j v2.2 was released. It supports the latest upstream API changes. When the new full mode is enabled, some model getters return even more details (where documented). Search supports multiple categories now. flattr4j-web support the new popout flag. And finally, the communication with the Flattr server is now logged.

In a blog article Flattr has announced that the old API v1 will be disabled on April 14, 2012. With the shutdown of the API, flattr4j v1 will also stop working. If you are using it, you should migrate to flattr4j v2, which uses the new API.

If the previous v2.1 was used with Apache HttpClient 4.1, it failed connecting to Flattr because of a bug in an obsolete method. Unfortunately, HttpClient 4.1.3 was used in the flattr4j pom.

flattr4j v2.1.1 fixes this behaviour. It is now fully compliant to Apache HttpClient 4.1, Apache HttpClient 4.0 and Android. If you use Maven, I recommend to update to this version.

This is a maintenance release with the deprecated code removed (as announced) and a few internal optimizations added.

But there are good news for all Maven users: flattr4j is now also available at Maven Central, so it is not required any more to use the shredzone.org maven repository.

The master repository of flattr4j moved to GitHub today. It was available at my Subversion repository before, with only a mirror copy at GitHub. With the master repository now being at GitHub, it is much easier to branch and create patches.

I decided to dump the old mirror copy and create a clean migration from scratch. The new repository contains all tags and also a branch for the former API v1. If you have cloned the old mirror repository, I am afraid that you have to create a new clone, as the commit hashes do not match any more. I am sorry for the inconvenience, but the old repository was rather poorly migrated and I think it's better to continue the development from a solid base.

flattr4j seems to be pretty stable now, so it's time for a v2.0 final. :-) It contains almost all Flattr API v2 features up to February 11.

The upstream Flattr API v2 has been in a constant change in the last couple of weeks, partially with changes that are not downward compatible. I will try to keep the flattr4j API stable from now on. However if features are removed from the Flattr API, of course I cannot continue to provide them.

flattr4j v2.0 contains many deprecated methods to maintain downward compatibility to flattr4j v1.2. These methods will be removed to the next release of flattr4j! If your IDE shows that you are using deprecated methods in your code, you should remove them soon. You will find hints for replacements in the JavaDocs.

I have just released flattr4j RC3. It supports the latest changes to the Flattr REST API: searching, user activities and auto submit URLs.

Because of the number of changes to the Flattr REST API, I decided to insert another release candidate before v2.0 final. Please test this version, and report any issues.

Along with a thrilling developer challenge, Flattr has just released their latest v2 API and added a few more features.

I am trying my best to release flattr4j v2 pretty soon, so you can even use the new features if you plan to use flattr4j for your developer challenge submission!

This release candidate provides a method called Thing.merge(), which can be used for conveniently modify Things by a Submission object. The HTTP connection has been improved. It now times out after 10 seconds (to avoid deadlocks on broken connections) and uses gzip for compressing the results from the Flattr server.

A still unaddressed issue is the missing support of client based authentication. Besides that, the RC2 is already feature complete, and it is likely that the next release will be 2.0 final.