LabOne API Level¶

Recommendation

We recommended to use the highest level (API Level 6) in order to have access to the latest features available.

Warning

The HF2 Series only supports API Level 1.

All of the LabOne APIs are based on a common library. Needless to say, we try as hard as possible to make any improvements in our core API backwards compatible for the convenience of our users. We take care that existing programs do not need to be changed upon a new software release. Occasionally, however, we do have to make a breaking change in our API by removing some old functionality. This old functionality is, however, phased out over several software releases. First, the functionality is marked as deprecated and the user is informed via a deprecation warning (this can be turned off). This indicator warns that this function may be unsupported in the future. If we have to break some functionality, we use a so-called API level.

With support of new devices and features we need to break functionality, e.g. data returned by poll commands. In order to still support the old functionality we introduced API levels. If a program only uses old functionality the API level 1 (default) can be used. If a user needs new functionality, they need to use a higher API level. This will usually need some changes to the existing code.

The current available API levels are:

API Level	Changes / Feature
1	HF2 support basic UHF support
4	Full UHF support Timestamps are available during poll for any settings or data node (that is either integer or float). Greatly improved Scope data transfer rates (and new Scope data structure). Greatly improved UHF Boxcar and PWA support.
5	Introduction of scope offset for extended (non-hardware) scope inputs (UHF, MF Instruments)
6	Timestamp support in poll for nodes that return a byte array .New commands setString and getString are available and should be used instead of setByte and getByte.

Hint

The Levels 2 and 3 are used only internally and are not available to the general public.