Hey all: So, I had been racking my brain as to why my user update code wasn't working right. Basically, I was getting double entries for screen names. It took me a while, but I figured out what the issue is. Basically, the twitter API method: users/show/id.format, looks up the screen_name field before it looks up the id field. Thus, when one puts in a request for say "1", it looks up the screen name first. Since someone has the screen name "1", that is the account that gets returned. The problem is that we need to look up the id "1". Any one also realized this and has a fix? I tried to find it in the groups somewhere but couldn't. Help as always is a great thing and much appreciated.
Just offering a potential fix or two, make two explicit API calls available. That way one doesn't break other peoples code and one can still migrate to the new more explicit version. The other potential option would be to provide a new param to the call ... something like force_id or force_screen_name, that when present the API would be forced to use that id or screen_name respectively to do the lookup. If you are wondering why it matters? Here is why I care :) When we get the statuses, we don't get the screen name we get the in_reply_to_user_id which is an id. Thus, we are missing a piece of information that we need to do the lookup for that user. If I take the id and do the look-up the status that is returned is for the screen name :( Here is a link to an example of what I mean: http://pastebin.com/m5d3b7713 Also, sorry if this is a re-asking of the question that people have already found and answer to cause someone asked it :(
