[twitter-dev] Re: Getting screen_name from id without gazillion API calls?
Owkaye, Well, Twitter would not need to change the system (with id's an screenname's) because there is a user advantage to being able to change your screenname. But, maybe the Twitter API could return both ID and screen_name with only 1 call to the API. Programmers can then choose to work with ID and/or screen_name and the API calls would still be limited. Only the data returned would be (a little) more... But, as it stands, there seems to be no other way to get screen_names (for friends and or followers) without doing 1 API call for each person (ID) on the returndata, which amounts to alot of API calls. On Sep 5, 5:09 pm, owkaye owk...@gmail.com wrote: The ideal solution is for Twitter to change the system and allow each account to have only one screen name, all the time, forever, with no changes. Then a separate id value is not required because all account identification will be done by the original screen name. REST and SEARCH would finally be consistent. No extra calls to figure out who the user really is. Users would complain until they got used to the fact that they cannot change their screen names on a whim anymore, but they will learn to deal with it soon enough. Email doesn't just let you change your address whenever you feel like it, and I see no reason why Twitter should allow screen name changes either ... except that it takes more work to standardize the system in this way than to continue with what already exists. But with only the screen name as each unique account identifier things would certainly be much simpler. Many fewer requests to the server. Less data storage. And being that Twitter is supposed to be simple this seems like a goal worth pursuing, at least from my point of view. Owkaye When i request friends (or followers) from the Twitter API i want to get the screen_name's based on the id's. I use users/show for this, inputting the id and getting back de screen_name. This costs ALOT of API calls and i run into the API rate limit fast, especially with many friends. Is there a better way of getting screen_names for friends / followers? ( Better, meaning in fewer API calls.)
[twitter-dev] Re: Getting screen_name from id without gazillion API calls?
I've done this this way: Every time I get a user's data- I store it in my database. Doesn't matter if its from gardenhose or a REST method. I track various versions of it and keep all changes (good data warehousing practice). Then, when I crawl a user's list of friends I ask the database if we already have the user (by id). If we've already got them, then I don't waste an API call in asking for it again (as I only have so many). If we don't have them, then I ask Twitter for it. If the next person I go through has all the same friends, then I never make an additional REST API requests. I also do this when accessing the Search API, to make sure I have all user profiles (at least in some stage). Unfortunately I have to do this one by screen_name/from_user because the Search API returns different user id numbers (Which I also store so I can match them if I must). I've got nearly 8M twitter user profiles this way so far and its always growing. -dave On Sep 8, 12:41 pm, dizid glasw...@gmail.com wrote: Owkaye, Well, Twitter would not need to change the system (with id's an screenname's) because there is a user advantage to being able to change your screenname. But, maybe the Twitter API could return both ID and screen_name with only 1 call to the API. Programmers can then choose to work with ID and/or screen_name and the API calls would still be limited. Only the data returned would be (a little) more... But, as it stands, there seems to be no other way to get screen_names (for friends and or followers) without doing 1 API call for each person (ID) on the returndata, which amounts to alot of API calls. On Sep 5, 5:09 pm, owkaye owk...@gmail.com wrote: The ideal solution is for Twitter to change the system and allow each account to have only one screen name, all the time, forever, with no changes. Then a separate id value is not required because all account identification will be done by the original screen name. REST and SEARCH would finally be consistent. No extra calls to figure out who the user really is. Users would complain until they got used to the fact that they cannot change their screen names on a whim anymore, but they will learn to deal with it soon enough. Email doesn't just let you change your address whenever you feel like it, and I see no reason why Twitter should allow screen name changes either ... except that it takes more work to standardize the system in this way than to continue with what already exists. But with only the screen name as each unique account identifier things would certainly be much simpler. Many fewer requests to the server. Less data storage. And being that Twitter is supposed to be simple this seems like a goal worth pursuing, at least from my point of view. Owkaye When i request friends (or followers) from the Twitter API i want to get the screen_name's based on the id's. I use users/show for this, inputting the id and getting back de screen_name. This costs ALOT of API calls and i run into the API rate limit fast, especially with many friends. Is there a better way of getting screen_names for friends / followers? ( Better, meaning in fewer API calls.)
[twitter-dev] Re: Getting screen_name from id without gazillion API calls?
caching is the best answer i have found On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 9:01 PM, dizidglasw...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, When i request friends (or followers) from the Twitter API i want to get the screen_name's based on the id's. I use users/show for this, inputting the id and getting back de screen_name. This costs ALOT of API calls and i run into the API rate limit fast, especially with many friends. Is there a better way of getting screen_names for friends / followers? ( Better, meaning in fewer API calls.) Thank you.
[twitter-dev] Re: Getting screen_name from id without gazillion API calls?
Do you have any code examples for this? So you basically maintain a local db of id-to- screen_names? Do you get all of a user's friend/ follower id's and then look up their screen names with individual API calls? What do you do when a user has more relationships than the API limit will allow you to query? And what about users that change their screen name? In short, can you provide a bit more background to your methods? Thanks! Michael On Sep 4, 2009, at 11:23 PM, TjL luo...@gmail.com wrote: caching is the best answer i have found On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 9:01 PM, dizidglasw...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, When i request friends (or followers) from the Twitter API i want to get the screen_name's based on the id's. I use users/show for this, inputting the id and getting back de screen_name. This costs ALOT of API calls and i run into the API rate limit fast, especially with many friends. Is there a better way of getting screen_names for friends / followers? ( Better, meaning in fewer API calls.) Thank you.
[twitter-dev] Re: Getting screen_name from id without gazillion API calls?
Thanks for your replies, I will try to explain my question better: My goal is to backup my friends (e.g. the people i follow) in a .cvs file. I first do an API call to get all friends, like this cfhttp url=http://twitter.com/friends/ids.json?screen_name=#tu#; method=get result=output / This works great and returns (after using 'deserializejson') an array of all friends ID's which i append to a Java stringbuffer and write to a .csv file. But, what i really need are screen_name's (and not ID's), So, i am looping over this friends ID array to get screen_name for each ID with API calls to http://twitter.com/users/show.json But when a someone has, for example, 3000 friends he's is following, that means i have to do 3000 API calls, and that is the problem. So, my question: is there a way to get a users friends screen_name's in, say,1 API call, just like you can get 3000 ID's with 1 call? I have not yet tried to get my IP whitelisted (just localhost at the moment), so i have only 150 API calls/hour. But even with a whitelisted IP i would run into ratelimit problems because EACH id-to-screen_name conversion needs 1 API call. Hoping that someone found a much better way for this :) On Sep 5, 8:54 am, Michael Steuer mste...@gmail.com wrote: Do you have any code examples for this? So you basically maintain a local db of id-to- screen_names? Do you get all of a user's friend/ follower id's and then look up their screen names with individual API calls? What do you do when a user has more relationships than the API limit will allow you to query? And what about users that change their screen name? In short, can you provide a bit more background to your methods? Thanks! Michael On Sep 4, 2009, at 11:23 PM, TjL luo...@gmail.com wrote: caching is the best answer i have found On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 9:01 PM, dizidglasw...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, When i request friends (or followers) from the Twitter API i want to get the screen_name's based on the id's. I use users/show for this, inputting the id and getting back de screen_name. This costs ALOT of API calls and i run into the API rate limit fast, especially with many friends. Is there a better way of getting screen_names for friends / followers? ( Better, meaning in fewer API calls.) Thank you.
[twitter-dev] Re: Getting screen_name from id without gazillion API calls?
The ideal solution is for Twitter to change the system and allow each account to have only one screen name, all the time, forever, with no changes. Then a separate id value is not required because all account identification will be done by the original screen name. REST and SEARCH would finally be consistent. No extra calls to figure out who the user really is. Users would complain until they got used to the fact that they cannot change their screen names on a whim anymore, but they will learn to deal with it soon enough. Email doesn't just let you change your address whenever you feel like it, and I see no reason why Twitter should allow screen name changes either ... except that it takes more work to standardize the system in this way than to continue with what already exists. But with only the screen name as each unique account identifier things would certainly be much simpler. Many fewer requests to the server. Less data storage. And being that Twitter is supposed to be simple this seems like a goal worth pursuing, at least from my point of view. Owkaye When i request friends (or followers) from the Twitter API i want to get the screen_name's based on the id's. I use users/show for this, inputting the id and getting back de screen_name. This costs ALOT of API calls and i run into the API rate limit fast, especially with many friends. Is there a better way of getting screen_names for friends / followers? ( Better, meaning in fewer API calls.)
[twitter-dev] Re: Getting screen_name from id without gazillion API calls?
statuts/friends and status/followers i guess On Sep 5, 3:01 am, dizid glasw...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, When i request friends (or followers) from the Twitter API i want to get the screen_name's based on the id's. I use users/show for this, inputting the id and getting back de screen_name. This costs ALOT of API calls and i run into the API rate limit fast, especially with many friends. Is there a better way of getting screen_names for friends / followers? ( Better, meaning in fewer API calls.) Thank you.
