[llimllib]

~13 years ago (!) I worked with the Amazon Seller API and left this comment in my own source code:

    // the XML returned from this request is *mind-bogglingly* bad. Terrifyingly bad.
    // a completed batch looks like this:
    // <Batch>batchid=363777811 status=Done dateandtime=09/18/2007 09:53:10 PDT activateditems=335 numberofwarnings=0 itemsnotacivated=17 </Batch>
    // and an incomplete batch like:
    // <Batch>batchid=363778361 status=In Progress </Batch>
    // so we'll just parse each item as a regex. Thanks Amazon.

The documentation at the time was just a post on a forum, that later got removed, so it no longer exists at all but this was just one of many horrors.

[abernard1]

I kid you not, I know exactly what you're talking about there. I also wrote my own regex parsers with fast-forward and rewind tokenizers, because it was so dreadful. I wouldn't normally do that.

There's also 4 (4!!!) different ways of returning errors in the MWS Feed APIs when used from Java. Given the number of entities, and the fact that they're combinatorial I had to do some of the craziest Scala code I've ever written because duplication was just too bad to handle for how critical that code was. To do it in a bulletproof way, that error handling for MWS feeds inherently has 2^4 control flows * N entities = 16N code paths at like 100-200 lines a piece if you didn't use some higher order abstractions.

[tannhaeuser]

That looks like putting "<Batch>" and "</Batch>" around a legacy text format and call it a day, to report that your service/API "supports XML" lol. Actually, SGML has mechanisms (shortrefs and "data tags") to parse strings like that as markup and could even infer "<Batch>" tags (but it still won't work satisfactorily with your example data).

[ethbr0]

I mean, Bezos did say people who didn't expose services as APIs would be fired...

[jancsika]

I was kind of hoping for:

<Batch batchstate="batchid=363777811 status=Done dateandtime=09/18/2007 09:53:10 PDT activateditems=335 numberofwarnings=0 itemsnotacivated=17" />

:)

[bfieidhbrjr]

reminds me of a description of MSFT's first XML-based office file formats (not sure if its true or was a joke) but it went something like

<xml> <office-proprietary-binary-blob> wky4b5tlwybkjbb2... </office-proprietary-binary-blob> </xml>

[kingaillas]

I kind of remember a massive CDATA blob... but my memory must be playing tricks on me: Wikipedia shows some sample markup of the pre-2007 Microsoft Office (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_XML_formats) and it doesn't look bad at all.

And it seems after 2007 they switched to an ECMA standard.

[ethbr0]

In all fairness, during the first XML migration, I'm sure internal MS folks were just as baffled at the previous format.

[gleenn]

Xml is an open standard man, just pretend your Neo from the Matrix reading the screen saver

[gfaure]

I note with horror that "activated" is misspelt in "itemsnotacivated" but spelt correctly in "activateditems".

[h2odragon]

the text based format in that implies lovely horrors. now all it needs is sometimes quoted items after "key=" (using and requiring different quotes, depending on which system you're speaking to) and at least 3 sources of "universal event ID" counter... just one "batchid" is too simple.

[SeeDave]

<Batch>batchid=363777811 status=Done dateandtime=09/18/2007 09:53:10 PDT activateditems=335 numberofwarnings=0 itemsnotacivated=17 </Batch>

Philosophically speaking, is this any different than 'syntactic salt' for a 'Batch' JSON object? ;)

[labawi]

Yes. It isn't json. Those are non-delimited key-value pairs.

[itronitron]

Were they not using a standard XML serialization library?

[joshxyz]

Jesus christ just kick me in the balls than making me deal with that XD