Frustrations on deprecating Spark.js

[bryce]

I'm sorry the deprecation was a surprise. Spark.js has received very little attention in the last year, and we thought it better to move forward with a new library because renaming needed to happen anyways. I would love to hear your feedback on how we can handle this better in the future.

@louis_

We don't know if the proposed action — adding an endpoint where you can validate an access token — is ever going to be addressed since no link was posted

Because an access token can expire at any time, the only way to validate a token is to try and use it. If there was an endpoint to validate an access token, it could return "yes, valid", the token could expire immediately after, and then when you try to use the token, it does not work.

@louis_

I also wish y'all had engaged the community while writing the new library. I get that it's not like this library is deleted and now unobtainable, but it's really annoying to have a deprecation dropped on you without any warning for one of your dependencies

We are always open to feedback about design and implementation. Please file issues on particle-api-js if you ideas/concerns.

@louis_

I'm very frustrated that the issue tracker was taken down as well. Aside from having a transition period to ease the difficulties of discovering and using the new library, there are good reasons why you'd want to reference old issues. Removing old discussions is often never a good idea, especially without advanced warning.

I can re-instate the issue tracker. It was taken down only to prevent users from filing new issues and wondering why nobody is responding. (GitHub does not let your turn off new issues without turning Issues off completely).