Current User Web Service

Hi,

This isn't exactly a mobile question but I thought this was probably the best place to ask.

Are there any web services that reveal the birth date of the currently logged in user.

The most useful service for identifying the current user seems to be /church-calendar/services/lucrs/mem/0/ but it doesn't show the birth date.

Additionally which service will reveal the birth date of all members in the ward (to appropriately authorised persons of course).

Thanks, Si,

silid wrote:Are there any web services that reveal the birth date of the currently logged in user.

The currently logged in user would be yourself. I don't see how that would be of any benefit since most people know their birth date.

silid wrote:Additionally which service will reveal the birth date of all members in the ward (to appropriately authorised persons of course).

There are no on-line applications or web services that will give the birth dates of members. I am not sure what the bishop and ward clerk can see in the Leader and Clerk Services portal but if it follows MLS they cannot print a report for the entire unit. The only other way to get birth dates is through an MLS custom report. The person retrieving that data must have membership editing, finance or administrator privileges to create a custom report to get that data.

jdlessley wrote:There are no on-line applications or web services that will give the birth dates of members. I am not sure what the bishop and ward clerk can see in the Leader and Clerk Services portal but if it follows MLS they cannot print a report for the entire unit. The only other way to get birth dates is through an MLS custom report. The person retrieving that data must have membership editing, finance or administrator privileges to create a custom report to get that data.

The Leader Portal does have a couple of ways of getting a report of birth dates for all members (the Birthday List has an option to show the age from which the birth year can be determined and Unit Statistics has a sub-report showing all ward members with their birthdays). It's pretty easy to get a report with birth dates in MLS too. Just use the Directory of Members, click Customize and check Show Information for Adults.

But I don't know if this is of any help for the question in the OP. But then again the web services aren't to be used by anything other than official church applications so I'm not sure what the purpose of the OP is.

silid wrote:Are there any web services that reveal the birth date of the currently logged in user.

What exactly do you mean by a "web service"? if you're talking about a API, the answer is that APIs are only for church authorized programs, not unauthorized third parties.

jdlessley wrote:There are no on-line applications or web services that will give the birth dates of members. I am not sure what the bishop and ward clerk can see in the Leader and Clerk Services portal ...

As eblood66 says the Leader Portal does share dates of birth for all members to appropriately authorised persons in the lookup tool, and MLS does export it. See https://tech.lds.org/wiki/Export_(MLS)# ... port_files

RussellHltn wrote:... the answer is that APIs are only for church authorized programs, not unauthorized third parties.

That is the answer to a different question.

All the information I've asked about is available online, but not through the documented services, but I know that the documentation isn't always up to date so I wondered if anyone knew where to find the extras.

silid wrote:All the information I've asked about is available online, but not through the documented services, but I know that the documentation isn't always up to date so I wondered if anyone knew where to find the extras.

Just because the information is available online doesn't mean there is an external web service that provides that information. The Leader Portal may be accessing that information directly from internal databases or it may be using internal web services that can't be accessed over the internet.

Unless the information is needed by an official mobile application it very well may not be available from an external web service.

I realise that, but I thought it was worth asking the question. My thoughts are that if I have access the data, perhaps it should be in the external web services. For what it is worth, I have found that the calendar methods getUnitMembers and getStakeCalendars give the birth dates but without years, and only of members that have opted in to public directory, even with leadership access.

I have found an mls web service for the birthday list, but it seems that the mls web services are not documented on the wiki. These contain birth date and month but not year, but they do contain the age.

I think you're referring to the Leader Portal.

RussellHltn wrote:I think you're referring to the Leader Portal.

I am. The web services are under https://lds.org/mls/ and are not documented.

silid wrote:I am. The web services are under https://lds.org/mls/ and are not documented.

The site linked to, https://lds.org/mls/, is the Member and Leader Services download site. This site is the source for downloading MLS and other software for administrative computers. There are no web services at that site.

The Leader Portal is provided on lds.org in the Tools menu. No software needs to be downloaded and installed from the MLS download site to gain access to the Leader Portal.

jdlessley wrote:... There are no web services at that site. ...

Visit https://lds.org/mls/mbr/services/report ... l&lang=eng with the header Accept: application/json and say that again.

https://lds.org/mls/mbr/services/rep...ctAll&lang=eng is not the same site linked to before. It is an entirely different site. And I do not have access. This last link appears to be part of the Leader Portal.

silid wrote:I am. The web services are under https://lds.org/mls/ and are not documented.

There are indeed web services at addresses under that URL. But as you said, they are not documented. It seems likely that they are not documented for a reason. And if they are not documented, it's entirely possible that even if you could reverse engineer them, you could not depend on them being consistent.

I'm not sure what you are trying to do, but you also should be aware of the policy on using web services, as stated by the Church's CIO:

joel wrote:Actually, it's against our policy to have 3rd party apps use these web services. The policy going forward is that the only apps which can use LDS Account credentials are LDS Community apps.

aebrown wrote:There are indeed web services at addresses under that URL. But as you said, they are not documented. It seems likely that they are not documented for a reason. And if they are not documented, it's entirely possible that even if you could reverse engineer them, you could not depend on them being consistent.

I agree. The reason may of course be that no one has got round to documenting them. I thought asking on here would be a good place to start.

aebrown wrote:I'm not sure what you are trying to do, but you also should be aware of the policy on using web services, as stated by the Church's CIO:

Thanks, I am aware.

silid wrote:The reason may of course be that no one has got round to documenting them.

I suspect they are sufficiently documented for the folks who are authorized to make use of them. You'd have to be a developer of an authorized project to have access to it.

RussellHltn wrote:I suspect they are sufficiently documented for the folks who are authorized to make use of them. You'd have to be a developer of an authorized project to have access to it.

Perhaps. I try not to assume so much.