How to get the user's pinned sites?

Question

I have been trying to find the API for getting all the pinned/favorite sites of the user, but I can't.

Answer 1

This information is not available in the officially released version of the API (2.2) and you won't find it in the documentation.

However, the Stack Exchange mobile apps have some 'special' API methods, hosted under https://mobile.stackexchange.com, which do expose this information. That's why you're able to see (and maintain) this list from the apps. They are no longer in development but still work.

I just tried a GET call to the following URL: https://mobile.stackexchange.com/1/preferences/get-pinned-sites?filter=fLdr8Pr0.&access_token=[ACCESS_TOKEN]&key=[APPLICATION_KEY] and got the following result:

[
  {"site":{"api_site_parameter":"meta"},"position":0},
  {"site":{"api_site_parameter":"boardgames"},"position":1},
  {"site":{"api_site_parameter":"puzzling"},"position":2}
  ...
]

which is indeed the list of my currently pinned sites. However, this method only works if you use an access token and key of one of the official Stack Exchange mobile apps, which you can discover with a tool like mitmproxy. That means you can basically forget about enabling this functionality for an arbitrary user using your app.