Enhanced Channel API: More Data & Authentication
What developments have taken place today?
This commit enhances the API’s GetChannel functionality by providing clients with more comprehensive channel data. Previously, a request for channel details would return an empty object; now, the API retrieves associated participants and their individual details.
The changes involve several key improvements: Firstly, it incorporates user authentication to ensure requests are authorized. Secondly, it efficiently locates channel information based on its ID. Thirdly, it fetches participant data – specifically usernames and last login times – from a dedicated user repository. Fourthly, all this information is consolidated into a new response structure named ChannelWithMeta, combining the core channel details with a list of participants. Finally, the encoding process has been updated to accurately serialize this enriched ChannelWithMeta object as JSON using a defined schema.
These enhancements provide clients with a significantly improved understanding of channels, allowing for more informative and user-friendly displays of channel membership and associated information. The changes were important because they increased the usefulness and richness of the API response, directly benefiting client applications by providing essential contextual data regarding channel members.