package reddit_api_kernel

README.md

Reddit_api is a set OCaml client libraries for Reddit's API.

reddit_api_kernel provides:

• Types for representing Reddit's API parameters and responses

• Functions for building HTTP requests and handling the associated responses for Reddit's API endpoints.

reddit_api_async provides a client for sending these requests to Reddit and some utilities for common usage patterns. It handles authentication and Reddit's rate-limiting headers.

Documentation

Here. I recommend the Reddit_api_kernel.Api and Reddit_api_async.Connection modules as entry points.

Design philosophy and caveats

Reddit_api aims to help users navigate the Reddit API via OCaml types. For example, many HTTP endpoints have parameters that cannot be used in conjunction with each other. In such cases, we wrap these parameters in variant types so that users don't have to discover the conflict for themselves. For another example, we try to wrap outputs in types that express the full range of possible responses from Reddit. If Reddit_api ever raises, we regard this as a bug and prefer to express this possibility via a type rather than forcing users to anticipate exceptions. Conversely, if some Response type t always has a value of type v, we try to provide a function t -> v rather than providing t -> v option and forcing users to guess when the result might be None.

The caveat is that this is hard. Reddit's API is not very well documented. Determining which inputs and outputs are legal is largely a matter of trial and error. At any given time, it's likely that we allow some invalid combination of inputs, or forbid a valid combination, or fail to handle some valid response.

If this caveat bites you, reports and pull requests are certainly welcome. To facilitate workarounds, we also provide:

1. A ?param_list_override:((string * string list) list -> (string * string list) list) option on each API endpoint that allows the HTTP parameters to be manipulated directly.

2. A Connection.call_raw function that allows users to access HTTP responses directly.

Credits

Thanks to PRAW for providing innumerable examples of Reddit API client code.