API just started playing up

Same here, this is happening far too often.

Yep same as was happening on Sat for me.  Too often indeed.

One of the cache is not being updated

This is dire. Much worse than Saturday.

This is when us manual dinosaurs sit back and read with glee.
No not really Contrarian.
But it must give you botters some sleepless nights worrying about these sorts of problems I would presume.

Its causing some chaos on certain Soccer markets. Bots reacting to old data.

i thought it was my pc 

Bets flashing all over the place.

Frog, you don't have to be a botter to use the API, it's a much more easy and efficient way of manual betting.

Opportunitie to profit abounding then ?
For those with quick fingers and nimble minds.
Too late in the day for me though alas. Slowing down time for me.

Fleece the sharks

Yeah I know trevh.
But it was primarily established for botters who like to trade automatically ? . Was it I don't know ?
But I agree high volume manual bettors, particularly in play, presumably also make necessary and valuable use of the API.

Did it in fact migrate over to sports betting from x-games in the first place ?
I mean how would have the original non BF mkt. makers on Xgames proceeded with an API ?
Impossible I would say, with a new game every couple of minutes.

Persistent intermittent issue for days now. Maybe it's just one dicky server in the farm or a network issue but I keep getting slow responses, around 1 in 20 requests take 100ms or more longer than expected.

Perhaps the lesson here for all auto-bot users is make sure your software has good error trapping and can litigate correctly all possible retun calls to get better position outcomes.

There are a number of apps that can fall over when bet-placing when not fore-filling the bet objective through implicit procedure structure in relation to retuned information.

"--- fore-filling "
Wtf is that ?

And also I don't like the sound of " retuned information ".

BFF - if anyone knew what you were on about you'd be dangerous.

I just received a reply from Betfair to confirm that the lousy data on Saturday 10th was due to a "single server failures" and of course they are "working to ensure any such future failures are identified and rectified as quickly as possible so that they have minimal impact".

Apart from the "implicit procedure structure" approach of BFF, does anyone have any ways to catch a server problem? I haven't seen any updates on http://service.betfair.info/.

Simple way is to keep track of total matched volume, if it goes down and a non-runner hasn't just been declared then you are probably looking at old data from a wonky server.

If you program the API yourself you can easily tell the returned data is incorrect if it does not comply to what you expect to get,then you take appropriate action to normalize your betting activities,
trying to do this via a third party app on the fly would cause many problems, the good news is that
server problems are rare but to assume servers done ever go wrong would be bad planning.

Fred,

That will work for GetMarketPrices, but what about the other calls. I can't see that there is a simple way of distinguishing an outdated call from, say, GetMUBets. The only way, I think, of doing this is to have the program retain data over a period of time, so that it can know, for instance, that a bet that was previously recorded as matched is no longer showing in the return from GetMUBets, and therefore the data must be outdated.

a lot can stray out of range when engaging in SOAP operations as you are ultimately relying on a second party to function the data beyond your control.

am not knocking betfairs API as its servers are some of the best and busiest on the planet.

BFF,

Do you have any concrete suggestions for failsafe ways of detecting outdated returned data?

My comments are only from a programmers knowledgs, not up to that stage yet in my programming of the api and your comments about sometimes not knowing if the return call is outdate4d has been noted

a logical observation though of the problem is how do users know that the returned call is out-dated as if a human can tell this, then a computer would be able to do the same if programmed.

after all a spade is a spade.

Well, as I said before, it is quite easy to set up the program to distinguish outdated calls if one provides it with a memory of previously returned data. And that is obviously how we, as human observers, can see immediately that old data is being returned. The point is, though, that this is a pain. For lots of applications, you don't ordinarily want/need to be collecting the data as the program receives it. You just act on it and then move on.

Lots of extra checks and balances on code have had to be added these week for API progs. Mine have been failing all over the place. Website been running like clockwork though.

On the phone to them now, my acc showing 0.00. . . .

Good tip from Fred!, thanks.

I think I would have to add a call to GetMarketTradedVolume to the cycle and look out for a decrease (not accompanied by a non-runner being declared). Contrarian, that would also work for you if you spot a problem with the traded volume you can guess that your GetMUBets data is unreliable. Tracking a change in the matched bets is tricky because something could become void or settled.

Maybe Betfair will decide to refund commission on markets where their servers send inaccurate information?

Personally I just mainly count errors when I place bets, if I receive too many ominous responses such as UNKNOWN_ERROR, INTERNAL_ERROR, or BET_IN_PROGRESS it's time to stop. I don't actually bet enough on each individual bet to be too concerned about having to know my exact position.

That's a conservative approach, trouble for me is that I generally leave the bot running during the day or overnight and so don't want a five minute server wobble to mean an early bath. And my margins are pretty tight so I do care about whether I got matched or not.

It's awkward. You take an early bath or expose yourself to risk. Another option if you see a wobble is to take a 5 minute nap. If you've taken 6 naps in the last half hour then it's time for bed!

Never have so few required so much to supply so little while fleecing so many. An ugly superfluous monster  created by city half-wits.

I suppose in trading terms a wonky server can be as problematic as a wonkey donkey in the backing
leagues.