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Discontinuing the Legacy REST API: Action Required

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This post is a reminder about important changes to the technical aspects of building external integrations with YouTrack, as well as the actions that YouTrack administrators and those in charge of setting external integrations for your teams must take by the end of June 2021.

What is changing?

Two years ago we announced that we had started to gradually publish new REST API resources and methods. We did our best to make the new API secure and flexible enough to allow our users to build custom integrations efficiently, while also addressing the pain points we dealt with in the legacy API.

The new REST API is now a fully supported, release-quality feature, and it’s time to discontinue the legacy methods, as we would like to concentrate our efforts on maintaining and enhancing this new API.

We are planning to start the transition in July 2021, and we intend to complete it by the end of the year. Of course, we will make sure all our official libraries, plugins, and widgets are migrated to the new API before switching the legacy one off.

What are the legacy REST API methods?

The YouTrack REST API methods are mostly used to build custom integrations between YouTrack and third-party tools, extending native YouTrack functionality. An integration could, for example, fetch issues from YouTrack and then build a custom chart based on the data.
If your team built any custom integrations, please take a moment to review them. The legacy methods are those that use the /rest URL prefix, while new methods are those that use /api instead.

Action required for our users

Once the transition has been completed, it will be impossible to use the legacy REST API on YouTrack versions released in July 2021 or later. All custom integrations that rely on the legacy REST API methods will stop working, as well. Please make sure to migrate all your custom code to the new REST API before July 2021 to avoid interruptions in your daily work. After July 1, 2021, we will no longer be able to guarantee that the legacy REST API methods will work.

The new REST API documentation provides detailed descriptions of new endpoints, and we also provide a set of ready-to-use examples that you can use to familiarize yourself with the new API.

What about YouTrack integrations with external tools?

We understand there are several YouTrack integrations that are widely utilized by our users but that cannot be affected by them – integrations with test management systems, for example. We are planning to contact representatives of these applications to communicate the upcoming changes and to provide all the help we can to make sure these integrations are migrated to the new REST API.

If you have any questions or need assistance with migrating your integrations to the new REST API, please contact our support team. We’re always happy to help!

Your YouTrack team

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