Hi,
We made a tool to record the moves of a game from a video, and want to use it to broadcast tournament games on OGS. We made a system that sends clicks to the web browser to record moves, but found that it is difficult to make it reliable.
Is there any plan to add API support for editing a game? It would be really great for our use case.
Thanks,
Rémi
We may find that you can already do this, I’m not sure off the top of my head.
But I do want to ask one point of clarification: when you say “enter moves” I think of “a game in progress, entering moves as a player”. But when you say “edit a game” I think of a demo board or a review.
This is likely a language thing - can you clarify the exact situation you have in mind?
Thanks for your reply.
Yes, it is a demo board. Artificial scribe for tournaments. It may navigate the game to create a variation as well, in case there was a recognition mistake.
I searched the API there: https://apidocs.online-go.com/, and could not find anything to enter moves. But if it is already possible, then it would be great.
Rémi
Thanks - it’s an area I’m not immediately familiar with, but I’ll go take a look 
(@benjito do you happen to know?)
You can certainly play moves to a demo board (or real game board) using a script. The trick is that it’s through the websocket, not the REST API. And that comes with complications 
I recommend you get familiar with viewing websocket messages in the Network tab of the browser if you want to learn the API - docs are sparse.
The key message is "review/append", but you’ll need to authenticate first. Here is a working script that adds one branch to the tree:
import asyncio
import json
import websockets
# change this to Prod server when your script is ready
URI = "wss://beta.online-go.com"
REVIEW_ID = 505
# Let me know if I can help find this. Getting it is a bit tricky, quick and dirty
# way is to just manually copy it out of your Browser Network inspector
AUTHENTICATION_MESSAGE = ["authenticate", { ...redacted... }]
async def get_review_response(websocket):
# while loop is used to flush messages we don't care about
while True:
message = await websocket.recv()
try:
data = json.loads(message)
if isinstance(data, list) and len(data) == 2 and isinstance(data[0], str):
# this message is sent whenever the demo is modified
if data[0] == f"review/{REVIEW_ID}/r":
return data
except json.JSONDecodeError:
pass
async def connect_to_websocket():
# Replace with Production server once your script is ready
uri = "wss://beta.online-go.com"
async with websockets.connect(uri) as websocket:
# Authenticate
await websocket.send(json.dumps(AUTHENTICATION_MESSAGE))
# Connect to review
await websocket.send(json.dumps(["review/connect", {"review_id": REVIEW_ID}]))
# Send message
await websocket.send(json.dumps([
"review/append",
# the "m" string is the important part. You can add arbitrary variations this way
# the letters are SGF coordinates so "jj" is tengen
{"f":0,"t":"","m":"pddppqddfqcnpjofjj","k":{},"review_id": REVIEW_ID}
]))
# Print the demo update message to confirm changes
response = await get_review_response(websocket)
print(f"Received from server: {response}")
# run the event loop once
asyncio.run(connect_to_websocket())
The result is I now have tengen placed in Demo Board
Gold. @RemiCoulom let us know if that does the trick.
The tip about viewing the websocket in the debugger tools is a big one.
Thanks for your reply. We’ll try to make a websocket client, that should be much better than our current solution.
Great - don’t hesitate to ask for help again if you need it!
Thanks.
We managed to use a websocket to enter variations in the demo board, and it seems to be working fine for our needs.
Now we would like to also create the demo board automatically. From what we can see by looking at the network traffic, this is done with a http request, not with the web socket. Is there no way to create a demo board by web socket?
Thanks for any advice on how to do this as simply as possible.
Excellent!
From what we can see by looking at the network traffic, this is done with a http request, not with the web socket.
That sounds correct!
Is there no way to create a demo board by web socket?
Not that I’m aware of. Is websocket preferred? IMO, http would be simpler and less error-prone anyhow
My thought process is “transaction: http; conversation: websocket”.
Create: transaction.
Play: conversation.
Of course this is open to interpretation, but it’s useful to have a mental model that fits
Hi,
Thank you for your previous answers.
We have decided to manually create the games in OGS and retrieve the game’s info through the API.
However from what I get, there’s a lot less information for Demo Board reviews (like komi or rules) and the game’s width and height seems be 19 even for a 13x13 board.
See for example: Review Detail – Django REST framework
That’s weird, might be worth a bug report to the GitHub. But something I notice:
This game from 2013 (Review #512). If you check out a newer review, the json looks a lot different, including correct board dimensions. e.g. Review Detail – 1417236
OGS should fix… But if you want to avoid bugs like these, my recommendation is to try to align with what the prod site is doing (does it get game info from socket instead of REST API?) as closely as possible.
It might have been confusing because the link I sent was from a game on the beta site Review #512. Even on a newer game (Review details - 1374944) the result is the same.
It seems like the difference is between reviews created with the Demo Board Tool and reviews from actual games.
I will open a issue on github and see if I can get the info from the ws instead.
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