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Module BggClient

BggClient is a API client for the Board Game Geek XML APIs. These APIs work for all geek domains, meaning Board games, video games and RPGs can be retrieved. It works on both the JVM and Android ( 24+). Before using the BGG APIs please refer to the Terms of Use for the APIs. Finally

If you're looking for all Board game IDs and some basic information please refer to this page that contains CSV with all boardgames instead.

APIs overview

See [org.audux.bgg.BggClient] for an overview of the APIs

Examples

Below are few short example more complicated examples can be found in the examples folder.

Simple board game request in Kotlin

Below is a code snippet that calls the things XML2 API retrieving info about "Nucleum" including comments left on the game.

runBlocking {
    val response = BggClient.things(ids = arrayOf(396790), comments = true).call()

    print(response.data?.things!![0].name) // Prints "Nucleum"
}

This returns all information about a Thing - in this case a board game including any comments users have left on the thing. Comments are paginated and would only return the last 100. See [org.audux.bgg.BggClient.things] for the full API. The actual response is Response<Thing> which is a wrapper that holds the response data or holds an error instead. Depending on what is requested (e.g. are comments included in the request?) the object is (partially) filled: [org.audux.bgg.response.Thing]

Note that call() needs to be called in a suspense function.

Simple board game request in Java

Using the library in Java is the same as in Kotlin, however it uses a CompletableFuture so the request and response can be used in Java.

class Example() {
    public static void main(String... arguments) {
        CompletableFuture<Response<Things>> future = 
                BggClient.things(
                                /* ids= */ new Integer[]{396790},
                                /* types= */ new ThingType[]{},
                                /* stats= */ false,
                                /* versions= */ false,
                                /* videos= */ false,
                                /* marketplace= */ false,
                                /* comments= */ true,
                                /* ratingComments= */ false)
                        .callAsync();

        // Blocking get - for example purposes only.
        Response<Things> response = future.get(2_000, MILLISECONDS);
    }
}

The same as the Kotlin example above; this returns all information about a Thing - in this case a board game including any comments users have left on the thing. Comments are paginated and would only return the last 100. See [org.audux.bgg.BggClient.things] for the full API. The actual response is Response<Thing> which is a wrapper that holds the response data or holds an error instead. Depending on what is requested ( e.g. are comments included in the request?) the object is (partially) filled: [org.audux.bgg.response.Thing]

Async request

Instead of using a suspend function you can also do a request inline by giving a callback. The request and response parsing will then be handled using Dispatchers.IO and Dispatchers.DEFAULT. The same as the things request above but using callAsync() it looks as follows:

BggClient.things(ids = arrayOf(396790), comments = true).callAsync { response ->
    print(response.data?.things!![0].name) // Prints "Nucleum"
}

Pagination

Pagination is completely taken care off by the library, a more in-depth example can be found in the examples folder. Pagination starts with the initial request i.e. when a page parameter is given that's the start page and the end page can be configured using the toPage param. If no page and no toPage params are given the library will attempt to paginate all pages.

var response = BggClient.things(ids = arrayOf(396790), comments = true).paginate().call()

// Prints "Loads of comments 524"
println("Loads of comments! ${response.data?.things!![0].comments?.comments}")

The above codes results in 6 requests to BGG, first, the initial request and then 5 parallel requests to retrieve the resulting pages/comments.

Paginated requests:

Not all requests can be paginates (as most of them are not actually paginated in the API nor need they be). However the following requests can be paginated:

  • forum - Aggregate/paginates over the threads in a forum. Only 50 per request can be retrieved which means that large forums could result in a lot of requests.
  • guilds - Aggregate/paginates over the guildMembers. Only 25 members can be returned per request.
  • plays - Aggregates/paginates over the list of plays for the given user (id). Only 100 plays per request are retrieved.
  • things - Aggregates/paginates over the list of comments or ratingcomments. The pageSize can be set but has a default and maximum size of 100 comments per request.
  • user - Aggregates/paginates over the list of buddies and guilds. The default page size is 1000 so it's unlikely pagination actually happens when called.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are a quick to get IDs of Board games, RPGs, etc. The sitemapIndex endpoint contains all sitemaps for the given domain e.g. boardgamegeek.com/sitemapindex has a list of several sitemaps ( UrlSets) that contains links to ALL board game pages. You can request the index by calling BggClient#sitemapIndex, but using the diffuse function will actually for off requests to the contained sitemaps and collect the URLs by 'type'.

val response =
    BggClient.sitemapIndex(Domain.BOARD_GAME_GEEK)
        .diffuse(SitemapLocationType.BOARD_GAMES, SitemapLocationType.BOARD_GAME_EXPANSIONS)
        .call()

println(response.data)

Data contains a (multi) map of types and URLs (Map<SitemapLocationType, List<SiteMapUrl>>):

Custom configuration

BggClientConfiguration allows the client to be configured differently. This allows the user to increase the maximum number of retries, the maximum number of concurrent requests and how the exponential delay is calculated.

BggClient.configure {
    maxConcurrentRequests = 5
    maxRetries = 100
}

Logging

Running into errors/faulty responses? Turn on the internal logging for the library to see the internal workings.

BggClient.setLoggerSeverity(Severity.Verbose)