Why is the `site` parameter required in `/me` call?

Question

I want to query information about the logged-in user using me, and this site parameter is creating some small problems.
I am developing a visual studio extension where upon logging in a user will get all his network accounts using /me/associated. After that, on clicking on any of the associated account, he will get more information about the user in that site, eg, stackoverflow, using /me. In this step, there is a parameter site. So how to have the parameter site where the user have accounts, so that I will pass it to /me?

1. On what basis is the site parameter present? Is it the api_site_parameter of site?

2. It would be better if this parameter wasn't present. Then, it would return a list of user in every site. This would make me independent of site.

Answer 1

RE:

1. Is site the api_site_parameter of the site object?
   Yes.   Although as stated in the "Per-Site Methods" section of the main doc page, you can also use the full domain name, EG cooking.stackexchange.com.

2. No, user and shallow_user are site specific objects. You absolutely need to specify site to get these.

---

Supposedly, the assumption is that all /me routes are site specific -- used by apps that only focus on one domain.

As stated in the "Users" section of the main doc page:

All user methods that take an {ids} parameter have a /me equivalent method that takes an access_token instead.
These methods are provided for developer convenience, with the exception of plain /me, which is actually necessary for discovering which user authenticated to an application.

Buried in 2 or 3 particular doc pages it states:

{These methods are} provided for consumers who make strong assumptions about operating within the context of a single site rather than the Stack Exchange network as a whole.

Where the applicable routes are of the form /users/{id}/{Some SE-wide object} and by implication this would include the /me/{Some SE-wide object} routes.

This certainly should be better documented in the pages where this doesn't make sense (EG: /me, /me/notifications, /me/inbox, and /me/inbox/unread).

And note that other /me/ routes, like /me/associated and /me/merges, do not require a site parameter.

---

What is your true purpose?

The question is unclear.

• To get the user's Stack Exchange-wide id, use the /access-tokens/{accessTokens} route:

  "account_id": 131474,
  "expires_on_date": 1455815636,
  "access_token": "3OT6bxxxxxxxxxxqPMZK9Q))"
  

• To get all of the user's associated accounts, use the /me/associated route:

  {
      "user_id": 331508,
      "site_name": "Stack Overflow"
  }, {
      "user_id": 55814,
      "site_name": "Server Fault"
  }, {
      "user_id": 41023,
      "site_name": "Super User"
  },
  etc.