2021 - Q3 Newsletter

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This edition will cover the following topics:

• 2021 - Q3 Newsletter
  • Scheduled Maintenance
    • FamilySearch Framing Prevention
    • Beta Environment Refresh
  • 2021 Changes
    • [UPDATE] Ordinance Reservation Limit
    • [UPDATE] Change to Search Results
    • [UPDATE] OAuth 2.0 Changes for Desktop and Mobile
    • FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.0 Released

Scheduled Maintenance

FamilySearch Framing Prevention

According to the June 2021 Developer Newsletter, we noted that there would be a change to http headers on the www.familysearch.org site to prevent framing. This security update has been released to beta.familysearch.org and is scheduled to be released to the Production environment on October 18, 2021. If your application launches a browser or uses an embedded browser framing this website, please verify that your user functionality continues to function as expected.

Beta Environment Refresh

The annual data refresh of the Beta environment from a Production snapshot will begin on Monday, November 29, 2021 at 9:00am MST. Many of the resources in the Beta environment will be unavailable for up to three weeks.

2021 Changes

[UPDATE] Ordinance Reservation Limit

A new policy for limiting the number of ordinances that a user may reserve was announced in the April 2020 Developer Newsletter. Despite delays due to COVID-19, this change will be enforced in Production on November 11, 2021.

• This change is already available in the Integration and Beta environments for testing. It is also available in Production for requests with the pending modification of ordinance.enforce.reservation.limit.
• Your application may also pass the ordinance.act.as.if.over.reservation.limit pending modification to force the error to be returned. When the Ordinance Reservation Limit error occurs, a X-FS-Ordinance-Reservation-Limit header with the reservationLimit is returned to the client.
• Applications that are approved for using the Ordinances API should be using the Ordinance Reservations resource to track the user reservation count.

Details regarding this policy change will be announced to the general public at https://www.familysearch.org/blog/ in the coming weeks.

[UPDATE] Change to Search Results

The scheduled release for the change to Search Results mentioned in the March 2021 Developer Newsletter will be released on October 11, 2021. This change is currently available in the Beta environment for testing and in Production using the pending modification of search.enhanced.gedcomx.

[UPDATE] OAuth 2.0 Changes for Desktop and Mobile

As announced in the March 2021 Developer Newsletter, the enhancement for long-lived refresh tokens is now available in each server environment. Please note that your app key must be configured on the server to request refresh tokens, so please send a message to devsupport@familysearch.org if this has not already been done. To request a 90-day refresh token, your application can pass a new scope parameter offline_access on the authorization request. Example request:

    https://ident.familysearch.org/cis-web/oauth2/v3/authorization
      ?response_type=code
      &scope=openid%20offline_access
      &client_id=a02j000000KTRjpAAH
      &redirect_uri=https://example.com/auth/
  

For more details on these refresh tokens and the transition away from Password Flow authentication, please refer to the following documentation:

• OAuth 2.0 for Native Apps transition guide
• FamilySearch Authentication developer guide
• Authorization API specification

All applications that have previously completed the Compatibility review for Authentication can be released with updated OAuth 2.0 code to Production at any time. The Password Flow authentication has been deprecated and support for this method will be removed by the end of 2021.

FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.0 Released

FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.0 technical information, specifications, tools, and guides can be found at GEDCOM.io.

At RootsTech 2020, FamilySearch launched an effort to create a new version of GEDCOM based on the 5.5.1 version that would include: 1) new expressivity, flexibility, and compatibility; 2) zip packaging of associated images and other files with the related GEDCOM file; and 3) public access using a GitHub repository. Many industry software providers and key influencers participated, and the initiative concluded May 15, 2021.

FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.0 is the outcome of those efforts and includes the following new enhancements:

• Zip packaging capabilities for photos and files have been added.
• Notes have been expanded for more versatile use and styling of text.
• Tools, sample files, sample code, and self-testing guides are included.
• The FamilySearch GEDCOM specification and any code available from FamilySearch based on the specification is subject to the terms and conditions of the Apache License, Version 2.0.
• Ambiguities in the GEDCOM Version 5.5.1 specification have been removed.
• A public GitHub repository generates maintenance requests and on-going discussions about future features.