#musicbrainz

does there exist some MB api where a client can query the "last update" time of an entity, or related entities? for example a client has a list of mb release IDs and related data that was fetched a while ago, now it wants to know which of them need to be refetched

without having to query the api for each ID

if it doesn't exist, would this be a valid proposal, maybe for the issue tracker?

(the update time being the timestamp of the last closed edit i suppose)

Until someone who knows what they’re talking about comes along, let me fill in!

Entities do have a ‘last updated’ timestamp at the bottom right of the MB web view/page, no idea if or how that can be queried via the API.

<03metadataismydrug> I haven't seen such timestamps in any api responses myself. But It's entirely possible I missed them. (I have been wishing it showed them for entities in a collection so you could know what items have been changed so you can refresh them and what you can ignore)

We don't have that kind of information, unfortunately. In the database, many tables (including for entities) have a last_updated column which records when the row was updated, and this is what's displayed in the sidebar of the website. It doesn't indicate if or when any linked data has changed.