The Twitter API currently has two methods for returning a user's
denormalized "social graph": /friends/ids [1] and /followers/ids [2].
These methods presently allow pagination by use of a "?page=n"
parameter; without that parameter, they attempt to return all user IDs
in the specified set. If you've used this methods, particularly for
exploring the social graphs of users that are following or followed by
a large number of other users, you've probably run into lag and server
errors.
In two weeks, we'll be addressing this with a change in back-end
infrastructure. The "page" parameter will be replaced with a "cursor"
parameter, which in turn will result in a change in the response
bodies for these two methods. Whereas currently you'd receive an array
response like this (in JSON):
[1,2,3,...]
You will now receive:
{ids: [1,2,3], next_id: 1231232}
You can then use the "next_id" value to paginate through the set:
/followers/ids.json?cursor=1231232
To "start" paginating:
/followers/ids.json?cursor=-1
The negative one (-1) indicates that you want to begin paginating.
When the next_id value is zero (0), you're at the last page.
Documentation of the new functionality will, of course, be provided on
the API Wiki in advance of the change going live. If you have any
questions or concerns, please contact us as soon as possible.
[1] http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-friends%C2%A0ids
[2] http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-followers%C2%A0ids
--
Alex Payne - Platform Lead, Twitter, Inc.
http://twitter.com/al3x
