Hello all,
First off, thanks for creating this site, and thanks for taking a look at this post.
In order to make the most use of your time, let me quickly outline the issue, how we stumbled upon it, and why we might desire the change.
The Issue
When viewing a private game (example here), it is impossible to see any sort of information about a game, it seems, except for the list of players and whose turn it is. This game linked is over, so you get more information.
However, when using the REST API for an active private game, authentication is required and an error is returned.
http://www.wargear.net/rest/GetBoardData/SOME_PRIVATE_GAME_ID_HERE?format=js
Why it matters
A few of us are fans of this website, and play in a group. A couple people are premium members, some not, but suffice to say we're fans of this site. In order to remind ourselves of turns, a couple of us have written some bots to scrape the site and post in Slack or send a text message when it's our turn.
Currently I am hosting an AWS lambda function that checks the site every X minutes, reads the playerstats table, and figures out whose turn it is and messages them to take a turn.
This is of course not the most efficient use of the website, and using the undocumented REST API would make life easier for me and consume fewer resources. (Side note: Even more efficient would be a Web hook API; a call could be made to third party integrations on set events, e.g. turn change).
Authentication, however, is required in the API, so I'd have to put my cookie on my host, though currently it doesn't need any auth via the HTML scraping method.
I'm happy to throw in my cookie into my bot so I can use the API, but I figured since the behavior is not consistent this could be a bug in either direction. Also, because Wargear does not use HTTPS I'm a little paranoid about a man in the middle attack.
Thanks in advance for looking at this
IIRC, the amount of information available for quick viewing (public or private game) depends on the membership status. for premium members its in the table below the game map that gives game stats and a summary of bonuses, territories, and unit counts in games; for standard there is a bit more work to do to gather that info (honestly can't remember what's viewable since i've not been a standard member in quite some time, sorry)
there are notifications that occur automagically if the settings are correct (see preferences/notifications at the top right for more).
I know API is available (See 'API' link in the page footer for more). if it's requiring authentication, or throwing an error - tom will have to chime in.
I get emails from the site each time it's my turn in a game, and I'm pretty sure I did also before I got premium. Works both for Public and private games. Is there any reason why you do not use this feature? If you're not aware of it it's under "Settings" then "Notifications".