Is there any way to be informed when Microsoft update an essential package? - frameworks

Every so often there will be a package updated that the bot framework service requires to be up to date. This time, it was something to do with the identity model. My bot is just sitting and running, and then we found out that it hasn't even been reporting errors (why we didn't look sooner) because nothing could authorise a request to it.
I think it's a bit ridiculous that a simple out of date package could bring down the entire bot, and I'm not sure if there's any documentation or newsletters telling us that certain things will be updated.
Any ideas?

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paypal api country codes json or xml or something, anything?

https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/country_codes/
lists the country_codes available for use with PayPal Express. That's fine and dandy, but not exactly code friendly! I see no actual API call that presents my server with this information. What am I missing? Do I really have to manually type in that list and manually check periodically to make sure nothing's changed?
Well, according to PayPal support... nope, only way is to manually do it. Granted, geopolitical scenes aren't changing THAT rapidly, and PayPal probably tends to align itself with the more stable list, but still I expected better. I should be able to set a cron that checks periodically against a nicely formatted JSON, etc, so I can automatically update the country list used by my sites. That way 5 years from now I don't have to find out that 4 years earlier I started unnecessarily missing business because PayPal opened up their services to Antarctica's hot bed of ecommerce activity.

Getting up to speed on current web service design practices

I'm admittedly unsure whether this post falls within the scope of acceptable SO questions. If not, please advise whether I might be able to adjust it to fit or if perhaps there might be a more appropriate site for it.
I'm a WinForms guy, but I've got a new project where I'm going to be making web service calls for a Point of Sale system. I've read about how CRUD operations are handled in RESTful environments where GET/PUT/POST/etc represent their respective CRUD counterpart. However I've just started working on a project where I need to submit my requirements to a developer who'll be developing a web api for me to use but he tells me that this isn't how the big boys do it.
Instead of making web requests to create a transaction followed by requests to add items to the transaction in the object based approach I'm accustomed to, I will instead use a service based approach to just make a 'prepare' checkout call in order to see the subtotal, tax, total, etc. for the transaction with the items I currently have on it. Then when I'm ready to actually process the transaction I'll make a call to 'complete' checkout.
I quoted a couple words above because I'm curious whether these are common terms that everyone uses or just ones that he happened to choose to explain the process to me. And my question is, where might I go to get up to speed on the way the 'big boys' like Google and Amazon design their APIs? I'm not the one implementing the API, but there seems to be a little bit of an impedance mismatch in regard to how I'm trying to communicate what I need and the way the developer is expecting to hear my requirements.
Not sure wrt the specifics of your application though your general understanding seems ik. There are always corner cases that test the born though.
I would heed that you listen to your dev team on how things should be imolemented and just provide the "what's" (requirements). They should be trusted to know best practice and your company's own interpretation and standards (right or wrong). If they don't give you your requirement (ease-of-use or can't be easily reusable with expanded requirements) then you can review why with an architect or dev mgr.
However, if you are interested and want to debate and perhaps understand, check out Atlassian's best practice here: https://developer.atlassian.com/plugins/servlet/mobile#content/view/4915226.
FYI: Atlassian make really leading dev tools in use in v.large companies. Note also that this best-practices is as a part of refactoring meaning they've been through the mill and know what worked and what hasn't).
FYI2 (edit): Reading between the lines of your question, I think your dev is basically instructing you specifically on how transactions are managed within ReST. That is, you don't typically begin, add, end. Instead, everything that is transactional is rolled within a transaction wrapper and POSTed to the server as a single transaction.

Facebook API changes massive?

I don't quite know if my question fits here, but I don't know who else to ask...
I recently upgraded my socialengine plugin, which should allow me login to my site via Facebook. The reason I had to upgrade it because it didn't work anymore since Facebook changed the API (API-KEY --> APP-ID). I think this was around 2010!?
Now I bought the latest version of the plugin, just to find out that it still requires an API-KEY. Their support told me that it's not supported anymore because the version of my CMS is not supported anymore (nice to find that out after paying for it). However they offered me to make the plugin work for me, if I am willing to pay, with a hint that due to the massive changes in the API it will need a lot of work.
To come to my question: Have there really been such massive changes? Has a task like logging into a site via Facebook become that different? I am coming from a programming background, may i be able to fix this myself?
The Facebook API is constantly evolving with breaking changes all the time. 2010 is a long time ago for the FB API, so it sounds likely it'll be a lot of work updating the plugin (if the required API features are even still available!)

Does there exist a robust Twilio enabled CMS with subscription management?

I've done quite a bit of searching for a CMS platform or robust framework that will perhaps facilitate the management of signup and subscriptions right of the box with a Twilio tie in.
Thus far I've only been successful at finding how many startups have been funded by the Twilio fund, who's building the nextgen voice enabled app, and various other things of that nature vs any real meat. Seems that there's a dearth of meaningful information without applying a plethora of negative google filters to reduce matches and even then it's still not giving anything real meaningful wrt my search.
So, I'm hoping that someone may have a better eye on the lay of the Twilio landscape as far as already existent systems go that can handle the bulk of needs that exist for a "regular" CMS esque site that needs to also handle subscriptions and e-commerce related tasks.
Hitherto I've just planned to build something out myself, but I wanted to do a sanity check before I spend a lot of time that could perhaps be obviated.
My suggestion would be to find a CMS that does everything you want (except the twilio links), on the platform you want, and then just add the Twilio stuff in. Twilio is simple to use, and should be simple to add-on to most open source CMS's. It'll probably be the easiest part of the project....

How can I learn which devices/OS versions my iOS app is being run on?

I understand that apple no longer allows me to send "device data" to third-party services. As a result of this, Flurry and presumably every other analytics company no longer collects OS/hardware version data. However, this data is very valuable to anyone trying to target development toward the people who are actually using the apps.
I can imagine a few different ways to collect this data.
1) Send a custom event indicating the hardware/os version to Flurry. This, of course, is in direct violation of the agreement with Apple. However, I suspect plenty of people are doing this, and just not getting busted. Still, not an ideal solution. Even if Apple didn't notice that we were sending this data, I'd rather not have the possibility of the app getting pulled hanging over my head.
2) Use an analytics package which allows me to collect data on my own server. Localytics is one company which seems to offer this. However, I don't think they offer this with their free plan. Is anyone aware of any free (or cheap) analytics tools which will allow me to send data to my own server?
3) Roll my own solution. This could either be an entire replacement for Flurry, or I could continue to use flurry, but send only the device data to my own server. This is a little clunky. I'd much rather have all my analytics data in one place. And would much rather not have to deal with building my own tool if I don't have to
So, is anyone else collecting device data? Are you using one of the above techniques? Or maybe something different I hadn't thought of?
Hi maybe "Testflight Live" could help you.
As far as I know Testflight is allowed by Apple.
https://testflightapp.com/sdk/live/
I've heard of people using UIWebViews to connect to a webpage with a counter. The counter is incremented each time a page is accessed, and the pages are separated by feature/UIView. This way the developer can tell which features get the most usage.
As far as device data, you most likely are looking at rolling your own tracking mechanism, probably going through a server like Google App Engine that's set up to receive your data.
I made this an answer so I could continue to check back, because I'd like to know some more info as well. I voted up your question and favorited it
Good luck, sir