# Retrieve review settings

`GET /api/v1/review-settings`

The store's review policy, and the context every other read in this family is missing. All of them serve approved reviews only, and what "approved" MEANS is set here: a store with auto_publish on publishes whatever a shopper writes, one with eligibility_mode purchase_gated publishes only verified buyers, and one with require_moderation on holds everything for a human. Read this before deciding how much weight to give a rating. syndicate_group_reviews IS THE FIELD THAT CHANGES HOW YOU READ THE REST. With it on, a review written on one product also appears on its group siblings and the rating is pooled across the group, so summing per-product counts double counts and one moderation call moves several products' visible ratings at once. A STORE THAT HAS NEVER SAVED SETTINGS ANSWERS 200 WITH THE DEFAULTS, not 404. The policy is in force either way, so a 404 would claim the store has no review policy when an unconfigured store moderates and does not auto-publish. updated_at is null there, and that is how you tell a saved policy from the fallback: there is no row, so there is no timestamp, and a zero date or a fresh now() would each state a fact the server does not have. blocked_phrases IS NOT PUBLISHED AND WILL NOT BE. It is the merchant's own moderation-evasion word list, so handing it over would hand over the enforcement boundary itself: anyone holding it knows precisely which wordings pass. If a future need is only "is screening configured", the additive field is a count, not the list. allow_media and allow_video let you distinguish "the merchant turned attachments off" from "nobody has uploaded any", which are different facts behind the same empty media array on a review. READ ONLY. Nothing on this API writes review settings, because auto_publish and require_moderation ARE the moderation policy: a key able to set them could turn moderation off and then publish anything through the ordinary shopper submit path. write_reviews buys clearing a queue, never redefining what the queue is for.

## Responses

- `200` — Success
- `400` — The request was refused before any state changed. `code` is one of:

`invalid_body`, a write body this route will not take. `reason` partitions it
and `field` names the key when one key is at fault.
`invalid_query`, a query parameter, including limit and after.
`invalid_text`, a NUL byte or bytes that are not valid UTF-8 anywhere in the
path, the query or the body. Strip control characters before sending.
`idempotency_key_required`, a write sent without the Idempotency-Key header.
`invalid_request`, an Idempotency-Key longer than 255 bytes.

Routes add their own codes for rules only they know. Switch with a default arm.
- `401` — No credential, or one this API does not accept. `code` is always
`unauthorized`.

THE BODY IS DELIBERATELY UNINFORMATIVE. An expired key, a revoked key, a
publishable key, a key belonging to another merchant and a key that never
existed are all refused with the same bytes, so this response cannot be used to
probe which keys exist. Check the key's state in the dashboard rather than
inferring it here.

Send the key as `Authorization: Bearer <key>` or as `X-API-Key: <key>`. It is
never accepted in a query string.
- `403` — The key lacks the read_reviews scope. `code` is `insufficient_scope` and the message names the scope to ask the merchant for.
- `429` — Too many requests. `code` is `rate_limited`.

Two limits apply independently: one on the credential and the route family,
one on the client address. The headers describe whichever has less left, so
honouring Retry-After always clears the window that bound.
- `default` — Any status this operation does not list, in the same envelope.

A 5xx means the request may or may not have applied. Retry it with the SAME
Idempotency-Key: that is the only way to find out without risking a duplicate,
and it is what the key is for.

A few 4xx conditions arrive here rather than as a listed status because they
depend on the merchant's plan or on a module being wired: 402 when a quota or a
plan limit is reached, and 503 when a capability the route needs is not
configured on this deployment. Both carry a `code` naming which.

## Example

```bash
curl --request GET \
  --url 'https://api.mercemur.com/api/v1/review-settings' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer <token>'
```