Voting via the API

This covers the API calls involved in casting a vote. For cooldowns, the weekend bonus, and vote credit values, see the Voting Rules & FAQ on the main site, this page is about the request sequence, not the policy behind it.

Casting a vote

PUT /users/{uid}/{target_type}/{target_id}/votes?upvote=true

Requires User-Auth. upvote is a required query parameter, true or false.

Bots and servers require a solved captcha unless the owner has opted out (captcha_opt_out). Packs and teams never require one. If a captcha is required and missing or invalid, the request fails with a 400 telling you to fetch a challenge first.

The captcha

Omniplex uses a self-hosted, stateless proof-of-work captcha rather than a third-party service, there's no external API key involved.

1. Get a challenge

GET /votes/captcha/challenge

{
  "salt": "a1b2c3...",
  "difficulty": 20,
  "expires": 1735689600000,
  "signature": "..."
}

The challenge is valid for 2 minutes and needs no authentication to request.

2. Solve it

Find a nonce (a decimal-digit string, at most 32 characters) such that sha256(salt + ":" + nonce) has at least difficulty leading zero bits. There's no shortcut, this is deliberately real computational work, brute force incrementing nonce values until the hash qualifies.

3. Submit it with the vote

Send the solved challenge, with the nonce added, as the JSON body of the vote request:

{
  "salt": "a1b2c3...",
  "difficulty": 20,
  "expires": 1735689600000,
  "signature": "...",
  "nonce": "839201"
}

The salt, difficulty, expires, and signature must be sent back exactly as issued, they're part of what the signature covers. Each signature can only be used once, resubmitting the same solved challenge on a second vote fails.

Checking vote status

GET /users/{uid}/{target_type}/{target_id}/votes

Tells you whether the user has an active vote for that entity right now, and if not, how long until they can vote again.