Greater Access and More Profile Data for Developers
Code Alert! This is a part of our continuing series for Developers at LinkedIn, syndicated from our Developer blog. If this isn’t your cup of code, check back next week for regular LinkedIn programming. Check out some of the partner integrations we announced earlier this year. And, if you are a developer please visit our Developer Network site.
The LinkedIn Open API program has been live for 6 months now and after watching what you are building and what you need, we are announcing a wide variety of new features that target three of the most common requests and needs our developers have asked for.
A vastly improved Search API that lets developers search and also process a great amount of analytical data on LinkedIn came out two weeks ago. That will let developers build much more powerful search experiences on your site using the LinkedIn API. Major request fulfilled.
Today, we're announcing another set of major improvements to developers' experience of working with the LinkedIn platform: higher throttles where you need them most, and greater access to profile data.
Higher Throttles
We've made two key changes to throttles that will make it easier to develop and test developers' applications:
Higher Search Throttles
We've increased the Search API throttle by 400%. The search throttle is now 100 searches per user per day. This should accommodate most use cases very well.
Higher Throttles for Developers
While you are developing your application, it's hard to build and test without hitting some of the user throttles. Effective immediately, when you are listed as a developer on an API key, your throttle will be 4 times higher than the published user throttles for most calls. We think this is the right number, but we will be watching and listening and will respond further if necessary.
It's important to remember that while the higher developer throttles apply to you as a developer of the application, they don’t apply to your users. Be careful not to build features that require the higher throttles to work. These higher developer throttles are there to help you develop and test applications.
Greater Access to Profile Data
In the past, we've returned two versions of profiles:
- For your users who grant you access, you get the fully detailed profile
- For everyone else, we return the current job information only
Effective now, you will get the full profile details for users who grant you access (no change there) and also for those user's connections as well. This matches the site more closely and lets you present deeper insights to your users.
To access this data, simply include the fields you want in the call.
For full details on the fields you get for each user, check the Profile Fields doc.
…Oh, And One More Thing: Full Recommendation Text on Profiles
Starting today, you can also get the text of recommendations for a profile. This was a long standing request and we're happy to get it out. You will be able to get the full text of recommendations for users who grant you access and their first degree connections. We'll look to expand this to all profiles soon.