It would be fantastic if a next/previous match field existed for each of the players, but i understand how that might be a little bit excessive.
In that case, a profile query that will return just their match ids (in the order the occur) would also be useful. Either, return the last 25 matches as the matches system already does. Or if a match ID is provided return say 10 matches on either side of the provided id.
That is, unless someone knows of a way to find a players next/previous match based on some match id and i’ve perhaps missed it? That would be grand.
In general, with API design you want to avoid creating overlap of data as much as possible. Having an API endpoint dedicated to returning just match IDs would overlap with the matches method of the Stats endpoint which gives you the full match data along with the match IDs.
A next/previous match field would also not serve a good purpose as it would not actually cut down on the number of API calls. If you query the last matches of a player, you’ve already obtained the associated match IDs and for the player’s last match, the “next match” field would be empty. Once that player has played another match, in order for you to get the aforementioned “next match” ID, you would need to send another API call to the matches endpoint in which case you have already obtained the updated match IDs and the associated data.
Essentially, a next/previous match ID field would be redundant information as you would have already obtained that data in the course of the API call to the matches endpoint in the first place.