Hi Niall,
This is something that's come up internally about the firehose and we're
working on a solution. For search specifically there is a Google Code issue
[1] and we're hoping to get to it soon.
Thanks;
— Matt Sanford
[1] - http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/detail?id=164
On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Niall Kennedy <[email protected]>wrote:
>
> I am wondering how Twitter communicates statuses messages that may
> have existed at one point in time but have since been deleted by a
> member.
>
> Scenario:
> 1) John hits publish.
> 2) Message broadcast to all requesting (including firehose)
> 3) John doesn't like the message and deletes it
> 4) He might perform something closer to an edit and publish a second
> status soon after
>
> Example:
> http://twitter.com/GSouder/statuses/1138232864
>
> In the HTTP world we would just return a 410 Gone status on the
> Twitter.com page for the given status message. Twitter currently
> returns a 404. It might be helpful to add another step before
> returning a 404 on that URL pattern to instead check for a status that
> did exist at one point in time but is not coming back.
>
> Given the firehose of new statuses the scenario might require a
> second firehose of removals.
>
> I ran into this problem while using Twitter search. The returned
> status doesn't always exist on Twitter.com but the search client
> consuming the firehouse might not update.
>
>
> -Niall Kennedy
>
