Suggestions to fix backpack updating

[Chuck]

As everyone knows, broken backpack update is one of the most frequent complaints on the site at the moment. That happens due to Valve's IEconItems_440/GetPlayerItems API being a piece of shit. To have somewhat good chances for it to work, most of the time you need to retry. A lot. It doesn't look like that's the case right now. A suggest to add more retries before timeout and switching to fallback inventory.

 

Then comes rate limit. In my experience this API can be spammed quite a bit without any limits, but it's probably not the case for such a mass scale. I suggest allowing us to (optionally) use our own Steam API key and ip adress to update any inventory that we visit when logged in. Don't know how possible it is from technical standpoint but it will solve any potential rate limit problems.

 

I know dev aren't quite active on a site recently, but I'd consider this a critical issue, it seems to get worse and worse.

[Abstract]

1 hour ago, Chuck said:

As everyone knows, broken backpack update is one of the most frequent complaints on the site at the moment. That happens due to Valve's IEconItems_440/GetPlayerItems API being a piece of shit. To have somewhat good chances for it to work, most of the time you need to retry. A lot. It doesn't look like that's the case right now. A suggest to add more retries before timeout and switching to fallback inventory.

 

Then comes rate limit. In my experience this API can be spammed quite a bit without any limits, but it's probably not the case for such a mass scale. I suggest allowing us to (optionally) use our own Steam API key and ip adress to update any inventory that we visit when logged in. Don't know how possible it is from technical standpoint but it will solve any potential rate limit problems.

 

I know dev aren't quite active on a site recently, but I'd consider this a critical issue, it seems to get worse and worse.

I don't know if using your own API key would help considering that other independent (as in not part of backpack/scrap/marketplace) platforms like bot.tf also have trouble at the moment 

[Chuck]

17 minutes ago, Uncertain said:

I don't know if using your own API key would help considering that other independent (as in not part of backpack/scrap/marketplace) platforms like bot.tf also have trouble at the moment

At the moment it's completely dead, but it's partially dead pretty much all the time. I'm talking more in general than about this particular moment. I used this API with my bots so I kinda know what I'm talking about, it always needed hella lot of retries. More API keys will help if that's what causes rate limits. But I think proxying requests through user ips will help more if it's possible.

[DanielDee]

There has been an issue with steam inventory for quite some time. I have mentioned it before. Whenever i have an issue with bacpack not being able to parse my inventory contents i goto the steam client and then try and view steam inventory and then tf2 inventory within the steam client. If it comes up with the message. Failed to load inventory, please try again later then i am pretty certain that there is a random empty slot somewhere in your tf2 inventory. Be it at the beginning or in the middle. To remedy the loading failed in steam inventory and the bp error i start TF2. Then sort the backpack into date order, which essentially removes any spaces(slack) in the inventory. I then close tf2. Wait 2 minutes and then refresh backpack.tf. 99% of the time this ALWAYS fixes the issue.

[Chuck]

8 hours ago, DanielDee said:

There has been an issue with steam inventory for quite some time. I have mentioned it before. Whenever i have an issue with bacpack not being able to parse my inventory contents i goto the steam client and then try and view steam inventory and then tf2 inventory within the steam client. If it comes up with the message. Failed to load inventory, please try again later then i am pretty certain that there is a random empty slot somewhere in your tf2 inventory. Be it at the beginning or in the middle. To remedy the loading failed in steam inventory and the bp error i start TF2. Then sort the backpack into date order, which essentially removes any spaces(slack) in the inventory. I then close tf2. Wait 2 minutes and then refresh backpack.tf. 99% of the time this ALWAYS fixes the issue.

I see failed inventory load within Steam very rarely, it has nothing to do with IEconItems_440/GetPlayerItems API. I pretty much never sort my inventories either and I have empty spaces at all times. Sometimes it just works, and sometimes it doesn't. I just tried to sort my bot backpack and it didn't help. Doubt there is any correlation.

[piman]

On 7/20/2020 at 11:06 AM, Chuck said:

Then comes rate limit. In my experience this API can be spammed quite a bit without any limits, but it's probably not the case for such a mass scale. I suggest allowing us to (optionally) use our own Steam API key and ip adress to update any inventory that we visit when logged in. Don't know how possible it is from technical standpoint but it will solve any potential rate limit problems.

But we're forgetting there's an actual server(s) behind this API. If we spam it even more by bypassing rate limits, wouldn't we make the problem worse? Servers can only process so many requests at a time. If we use different ips and API keys and keep spamming, wouldn't that make the API more unstable?

The way I see it, that idea is like shooting ourselves in the foot, while making life worse for everyone else that uses the API.

 

As for the viability of the idea, It is totally possible to include it as part of the site itself. However, that comes with some major security risks, as the API key isn't something to be taken lightly. On the other hand, it is also possible to make an application that would send inventory data to backpack.tf using its APIs. However, both solutions include the risk of falsifying backpacks, as code can be reverse-engineered and incorrect data can be sent.

 

So, in conclusion:

a) Your idea is possible to implement into the website 

b) Your idea would also let backpack.tf become the holder of the API keys of dozens of users. This causes backpack.tf to be a very appealing target for hackers, and if a breach occurs, those users would become the targets of possible scams at no fault of their own.

d) It also becomes possible to falsify backpacks, such as changing the item ID, so item histories become broken.

e) Backpack.tf probably won't implement this due to above problems.

[Chuck]

 

20 hours ago, Piman said:

If we use different ips and API keys and keep spamming, wouldn't that make the API more unstable?

If things will get worse, they can always roll back. People refresh their backpack untill it works anyway, a lot use scripts for that, so I don't know if it counts as "more spam" to begin with. It's hard to make it more unstable than it already is. Valve need to get their shit together and start supporting it one bit, pretty sure there aren't as much connections to it relative to TF2 community size, they probably just have some shittiest rusty server in the closet keeping it up.

20 hours ago, Piman said:

However, that comes with some major security risks, as the API key isn't something to be taken lightly.

Fair enough, guess just ip proxying would suffice.

 

Or, well, just allow us to list from fallback inventory already. Actually functioning trading is more important than keeping accurate item histories.

[piman]

4 hours ago, Chuck said:

Or, well, just allow us to list from fallback inventory already. Actually functioning trading is more important than keeping accurate item histories.

Didn't they try to do that already? As for your point, I 100% agree. Its a pain in the neck, not even considering what it does to my bots.

[piman]

4 hours ago, Chuck said:

Fair enough, guess just ip proxying would suffice.

That would expose Backpack.tf's API key.

[Zeus_Junior]

On 7/22/2020 at 9:36 PM, Chuck said:

Or, well, just allow us to list from fallback inventory already. Actually functioning trading is more important than keeping accurate item histories.

You can

[Chuck]

2 hours ago, Zeus_Junior said:

You can

It's not working because as I just noticed, I can't even see most inventory changes made since last good inventory in my fallback inventory now. So fallback inventory is pretty much useless. Am I missing something or you broke it trying to make fallback items listable?

[Zeus_Junior]

2 hours ago, Chuck said:

It's not working because as I just noticed, I can't even see most inventory changes made since last good inventory in my fallback inventory now. So fallback inventory is pretty much useless. Am I missing something or you broke it trying to make fallback items listable?

This is all thats been said about it, they've already been re-enabled (it showed an error message saying it was disabled).

I don't have problems with fallback inventories loading and I don't know any more than you do here.

[Chuck]

4 hours ago, Zeus_Junior said:

This is all thats been said about it, they've already been re-enabled (it showed an error message saying it was disabled).

I don't have problems with fallback inventories loading and I don't know any more than you do here.

I don't have problems with them loading either, they just weren't showing most items my bot recieved and were showing most items it lost since it's last good inventory. I think it got better now but some items are still missing. Currency and bp slot counters are also slightly off because of that. Weird. Well, still better than nothing.

 

I wasn't aware fallbacks receiving an overhaul. Guess if devs willing to go that route and will fix it not showing some changes, my suggestions about improving "good" inventory load success rate are only relevant for improving history tracking, which is not that high of priority I guess.