Frequently Asked Questions

General

  1. Is this an official Netflix project?
  2. So who do I go to for support?
  3. So what's the value proposition here? Why should I use this?

Using the Client

  1. What's with the API responses? How come all I can get back is Strings?
  2. How do I know what URIs to call?
  3. What's the deal with this crazy OAuth handshake? Can't I just get a user's credentials?

General

Is this an official Netflix project?

Nope. We're just doing this for fun. This project is not associated with Netflix.

So who do I go to for support?

Right now your best bet is emailing one of the developers. We're also working on getting an issue tracker up.

So what's the value proposition here? Why should I use this?

Most practically, it shields you from having to worry about OAuth much. Creating and signing requests, exchanging request tokens for access tokens, et. al., gets pretty tedious after a while. We've taken care of that.

Using the Client

What's with the API responses? How come all I can get back is Strings?

Actually, you can get an InputStream back as well. By default, calling getResponse() returns a string, because in the vast majority of cases, that's all that anyone will ever want or need. If you call getResponseStream() though, you'll get a stream... handy for those humongous calls to /catalog/index.

How do I know what URIs to call?

All our documentation assumes you're familiar with REST in general and Netflix's use of it in particular, all of which is covered nicely by the offical docs.

What's the deal with this crazy OAuth handshake? Can't I just get a user's credentials?

The three-part OAuth handshake is necessary to get access to user data without getting their credentials. This can only be done by sending the user to the Netflix site to log in and authorize your application to act on their behalf. Netflix will then redirect the user back to your site to continue with your use case. Obviously, for this to happen, your app needs to be able to listen for HTTP traffic. But that's OAuth, which was from the beginning conceived as a web protocol. Embedded apps and devices need to use another means of obtaining access tokens, which is not covered by this library.

Note that obtaining user's credentials, even with their permission, is directly and explicitly against the Netflix API TOS. In short, doing so may get you busted, and booted from the developer network, so don't do this!