Platform Update - Release Notes - 06/02/16

[slagle (Tim Slagle)]

This weeks platform update is a relatively small. Notable changes can be seen below.

Release Notes

• Many misc. bug fixes and performance improvements
• Root endpoint of SmartApps is no longer accessible through a web browser

[beckwith]

Did this already happen?

[scottinpollock (Scott)]

@slagle

Root endpoint of SmartApps is no longer accessible through a web browser

This is Really sad. What is the replacement?

[tgauchat (ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)]

@scottinpollock

This is Really sad. What is the replacement?

What do you mean “sad”? This “root” endpoint was a security risk. Explicit endpoints for individual specific Device commands or status queries are still fully functioning (ahem, that’s how SmartTiles v5.x still works…

I apologize in advance if I misunderstand the change or your question, but, I think this is not a big deal…

More details here:

Root endpoint access change 6/02/2016

If I understand correctly, this only affects the “generic” root endpoint which was technically a security scope leak (along the lines of stuff researchers raised concern about in the U of Michigan study). OAuth’d Web Services SmartApps should only be accessed by their explicit “mappings:” list, and only accept Commands and State requests for devices Authorized at the time of installation or user updating preferences. i.e., This won’t give any result and should give an authorization error. This is calling the “root” of a SmartApp’s endpoints… https://graph.api.smartthings.com/api/smartapps/installations/5750ee0d-cee5-66b5-af70-33c2cc34b6e4/<blank> Result: { error: "access_denied", error_description: "Access is denied" } But this, or many similar explicit endpoints as defined in Smar…

[scottinpollock (Scott)]

@tgauchat

I apologize in advance if I misunderstand the change or your question

I am afraid it was my misunderstanding, missing the word ‘root’. I immediately assumed this was related to the oAuth example no longer working for those that simply wanted to create some GET method endpoints for some of their devices.

[N8XD (I got a hair cut from Alexa)]

That’s what I thought too … I went and tested my GETs right away.

[SBDOBRESCU (Bobby)]

Wasn’t this the last announcement we got? Yet, we continue to get updates that break things every week. So much for transparency. At minimum would be nice if we would know that hot fixes are applied ONLY on Thursday, so we know to unplug our hubs on Wednesday night…

[awc (Allen Crawford)]

@SBDOBRESCU

Wasn’t this the last announcement we got?

Nope.

Weekly Update from Alex - 06/24/16

Apologies for missing last week’s post while I was traveling. This week’s post will include details from both this week and last week. First, I want to talk about the downtime we had on Tuesday, June 14th. The downtime was caused by our weekly SmartApp and Device Handler deploy. These deploys are routine and normally go without incident, but last week’s deploy caused us to hit a limit on our caching layer which caused the login and device control problems some of you were seeing. The caching client we use has a limit of 1MB and the total size of our approved Device Handlers grew larger than 1MB causing our platform to behave erratically. We recognized the problem right away and were able to create a hotfix and deploy it as quickly as possible. Although this was unfortunate, the upside is…

[SBDOBRESCU (Bobby)]

@awc

Nope

Technical specifications, rather than achievements and graphs. Those have an important role, but I get the pep talk at work on regular basis. Check @alex update from 5/27, how many people actually clicked on the “platform update” ? Actually compare the update from 5/27 to the one posted on 6/24. Big difference, isn’t it?

Weekly Update from Alex - 05/27/16

It has been a little over a month since my first weekly update. I’m proud of the progress we are making and it has been wonderful to see the support from so many in our community who are feeling the improvements in their day to day experience with SmartThings. We are going to keep at it! Here’s a summary of some of the progress we made this week: Hub Firmware Update - 14.40 We released a new firmware for the V2 hub that had two very important fixes. We squashed a bug that could cause the hub to go offline even though the hub LED was green and also addressed an issue with Z-Wave device identification. Platform Updates Our platform release this week had a ton of backend changes to improve latency across the platform as well as a fix for IDE event streams. Take a look at the release not…