upstream JSON

GFG’s public pages used to be HTML. This API does not scrape them anymore. It impersonates a browser against the JSON the site already calls. An old geeks-for-geeks-api.vercel.app URL is still copied into several files and never called.

Playground: playground.

Live work is services/profile.py and services/heatmap.py.

GET https://authapi.geeksforgeeks.org/api-get/user-profile-info/?handle={username}&article_count=false&redirect=true
POST https://practiceapi.geeksforgeeks.org/api/v1/user/problems/submissions/
GET https://practiceapi.geeksforgeeks.org/api/v1/problems/{slug}/

The POST body is {"handle","requestType":"","year":"","month":""}. Heatmap counts user_subtime on solved problems. There is no native calendar. Account created_date drives which years get fetched (today down to signup). The route still accepts deprecated range=last365days and unused month. Canonical path fetches full history then window_heatmap.

Topics: build_topic_analysis hits the problem JSON for tags. Tags are static, so _TAG_CACHE lives for the process lifetime. That is the only extra cache. HTTP cache is Redis like the siblings.

Mapper: info.fullName → displayName, userName → username, profilePicture → avatar, institute → institution. Stats use totalProblemsSolved plus solvedStats keys school|basic|easy|medium|hard. Those school/basic keys are why the shared byDifficulty object is a dict, not three LeetCode fields.

favicon.ico as a username is treated as invalid. Easy to hit if a browser requests the icon against the API host.

Headers on every call: Chrome UA, Accept: application/json, plus Origin/Referer of www.geeksforgeeks.org on the topic GETs.

sequenceDiagram
  participant B as Browser
  participant API as gfg-stats
  participant A as authapi.geeksforgeeks.org
  participant P as practiceapi.geeksforgeeks.org

  B->>API: GET /alice/heatmap?view=all
  API->>A: GET user-profile-info handle=alice
  API->>P: POST submissions empty year month
  Note over API: user_subtime per solved problem, created_date for years
  API->>P: GET /api/v1/problems/slug for topic_tags
  API-->>B: envelope platform gfg

1. Profile GET. payload.data missing → 404 User profile information not found.
2. Submissions POST. status == failed → 404. result missing → 422.
3. solvedStats keys school|basic|easy|medium|hard. Each problem has pname, slug, user_subtime.
4. Heatmap: no calendar endpoint. Count submissions by day from user_subtime. Walk years from created_date to today. Then window_heatmap for view.
5. Topics: GET practiceapi .../problems/{slug}/ → results.tags.topic_tags. Process _TAG_CACHE for the life of the worker.
6. Timeouts: 504. Connect errors: 503. Non-JSON: 422. 400/404/406 with user not found / valid user details → 404.

Contests, rating, badges never hit extra upstream. Empty models after the profile fetch proves the user exists.