2022 - Q4 Newsletter

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This edition will cover the following topics:

• 2022 - Q4 Newsletter
  • Scheduled Maintenance
    • Beta Refresh
    • Authentication Security Release [UPDATE]
    • Authentication Identity Provider (IdP) [UPDATE]
  • Upcoming Changes
    • GedcomX PersonInfo attributes deprecated
    • Language Tags

Scheduled Maintenance

Beta Refresh

The yearly scheduled data and service refresh of the Beta environment occurs on the last week of November through the first week or two of December. It is now been completed so any test data that you may have stored in this environment will have been deleted and overwritten by a snapshot from Production. Any test data that you need to refer in Beta can now be recreated and will be available until this environment is refreshed again the following November.

Authentication Security Release [UPDATE]

The previous security patch for the FamilySearch authentication service was released to Production November 2022 to www.familysearch.org. Some users of partner products utilizing some types of JavaScript or HTML 5 features referencing this website have been flagged for security concerns by this software. The FamilySearch Security Team has been able to make exceptions to the standard security policies to support expected activities. If your users encounter unexpected error messages, please contact devsupport@familysearch.org.

Authentication Identity Provider (IdP) [UPDATE]

The FamilySearch authentication service has released integration of identity providers (IdP) with FaceBook and plan to integrate services with Google and Apple authentication in the near future. Support for partner integration with IdP with FamilySearch is still planned for early 2023. Please watch for a new Authentication Guide in early 2023 for how to leverage this new technology for your users.

Upcoming Changes

GedcomX PersonInfo attributes deprecated

The PersonInfo object (see https://www.familysearch.org/developers/docs/api/types/json_PersonInfo) associated with Person objects is now available in all environments. The two deprecated attributes (below) will be removed in April 2023.

• privateSpaceRestricted Boolean (DEPRECATED)
• readOnly Boolean (DEPRECATED)
• visibleToAll Boolean (NEW) – set to TRUE if all FamilyTree users can view this Person
• canUserEdit Boolean (NEW) – set to TRUE if the current authenticated user can write changes for this Person data to FamilyTree

Language Tags

A change to the enforcement of required language tags specified in API data was announced in the Q2-2022 Newsletter. Starting early Q2 2023, if text strings passed through the API endpoints don't have accurate language tags, the API will return an error. For example, if Chinese characters are being passed without the correct language tag for Chinese characters, the API will start returning an error. For additional details regarding the use of language tags, refer to Q2-2022 Newsletter.