Errors in 4.6 fromsmarty calls that were valid in the past

I'm not 100% sure if this smarty syntax has been outlawed or Contribute Query is just being overzealous but this smarty call was valid in 4.4

{crmAPI entity="relationship" action="get" var="relationships" contact_id=$contactId} {if $relationships.values} {foreach from=$relationships.values item=rel}

// do stuff

{/foreach} {/if}

In 4.6 we get the error "We did not recognize the search field: var. Please check and fix your contribution related smart groups."

Same for the field action