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Is there a way to get a user's achievements list from Xbox without dealing with screen scraping etc.? How do sites like http://www.trueachievements.com do it? (they're definitely not screen scraping as they do not have my Live ID credentials...)

I know there's the Xbox LIVE Community Developer Program (XCDP) that provides some API but they do not provide achievements information as far as I can tell (links below)

http://duncanmackenzie.net/Blog/put-up-a-rest-api-for-xbox-gamertag-data

http://file-pasta.com/file/XML_Feeds.pdf

Eran Kampf
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If you want this information you can check out my new site https://xboxapi.com.

Again if your profile is public then you can see friends, games and achievements. This has taken me over a year (on and off) to code and is now in public beta. To date it has served nearly 2,000 requests and growing. I am still working on optimising this script and it should only get better in time.

I currently have an API request limit setup for 120 requests per hour per IP.

Lets hope there are no major updates to xbox.com any time soon.

djekl
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It says at the bottom of the TrueAchievements website that they are a member of the Xbox LIVE Community Developer Program. That leads me to believe that the XCDP does give information about achievements. Duncan Mackenzie's API for xbox worked for me for a little while, but then his web service seemed to go offline. Duncan also says that his web service will not be returning sadly. I can't get ahold of him to ask for release of his source code. I'm currently looking for another solution in retrieving the data. Unless I can get official access with XCDP, it looks like I'll have to do screen scraping. The screen scraping approach is not going to be pretty though. I'll let you know if I get any more information.

Cameron Tinker
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  • Yes, djekl and I have made progress on this. His api at xboxapi.com is very helpful. He and I are working on a new api for allowing logins of individual users in order to get secret achievements and color achievement images for unlocked achievements. – Cameron Tinker Dec 22 '12 at 04:01
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The current XCDP API does not give you any individual achievement information. At the moment the only way to get achievements is by page scraping and as of a couple months ago Microsoft has removed their non-JS log in form for xbox.com making it very difficult to log in. TA has found a way to get around this but he's trying to monopolize the scene and isn't willing to help others on this topic.

Even though TA does not have your LIVE credentials if your xbox.com page is public and if you give them your gamertag anyone can get your information by going to http://live.xbox.com/en-US/GameCenter?compareTo=GAMERTAGHERE

With the change the Microsoft has done they've also modified achievement icons. If you're looking at a friends profile and if you don't have the game or have unlocked the achievement the icon will be monochromatic even if it's unlocked by that person.

Jamie Taniguchi
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  • I've been working on an xbox live data collector the past month or so and it's currently in beta testing. I'm working on optimizing the script such that the overall runtime will be as low as possible. Currently, for my 15 games with about 500-600 available achievements, it takes about 2-5 minutes to do a full dump. I'm also working on providing a date range for the script to pull down incremental updates once the initial import has finished. The script uses the user's email and password to login as to get color images for the achievement icons. Info: http://www.cameronjtinker.com/?tag=/xbox – Cameron Tinker Nov 16 '11 at 22:20