Comments on: a GreaseMonkey script for Follow Rank and Follows in Common for Twitter User Profiles http://www.falsepositives.com/index.php/2010/01/28/a-greasemonkey-script-for-follow-rank-and-follows-in-common-for-twitter-user-profiles/ Ian Irving's Code and Culture from Toronto Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:20:50 -0700 hourly 1 By: Jeffery To http://www.falsepositives.com/index.php/2010/01/28/a-greasemonkey-script-for-follow-rank-and-follows-in-common-for-twitter-user-profiles/comment-page-1/#comment-34868 Jeffery To Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:48:14 +0000 http://www.falsepositives.com/?p=2377#comment-34868 A few suggestions on staying withing the rate limit: * Instead of getting the entire list of friends and/or followers, get the first batch from one API call, then prompt the user to load more (either actively with a popup or passively with a "more" button on the page). Continue to prompt the user after each batch. This way the user is in control of how many API calls they use. * When getting user details, use the statuses/friends and/or statuses/followers instead of calling users/show for each user ID. You get details for 100 users for each API call. * You may not even need to show details for every user. Twitter only shows at most 36 followers on a user's profile page; any more and it becomes a giant sea of thumbnails. Perhaps your script should also limit details to 36 users. * For the 36 followers shown on the profile page, you don't need API calls to get their details; you can parse the page / walk the DOM to get that information. * You may be able to use statuses/friends and statuses/followers instead of friends/ids and followers/ids (respectively); I'm guessing most users don't have more than 100 friends or 100 followers. That way you get the list and the user details in one call. Perhaps you can get the number of friends or followers (from users/show), then decide which method to call. * Call account/rate_limit_status before starting any large number of API calls. You can get the number of friends or followers, then estimate the number of required calls. Make the calls only if the user will stay within the limit. HTH, Jeff A few suggestions on staying withing the rate limit:

* Instead of getting the entire list of friends and/or followers, get the first batch from one API call, then prompt the user to load more (either actively with a popup or passively with a “more” button on the page). Continue to prompt the user after each batch. This way the user is in control of how many API calls they use.

* When getting user details, use the statuses/friends and/or statuses/followers instead of calling users/show for each user ID. You get details for 100 users for each API call.

* You may not even need to show details for every user. Twitter only shows at most 36 followers on a user’s profile page; any more and it becomes a giant sea of thumbnails. Perhaps your script should also limit details to 36 users.

* For the 36 followers shown on the profile page, you don’t need API calls to get their details; you can parse the page / walk the DOM to get that information.

* You may be able to use statuses/friends and statuses/followers instead of friends/ids and followers/ids (respectively); I’m guessing most users don’t have more than 100 friends or 100 followers. That way you get the list and the user details in one call. Perhaps you can get the number of friends or followers (from users/show), then decide which method to call.

* Call account/rate_limit_status before starting any large number of API calls. You can get the number of friends or followers, then estimate the number of required calls. Make the calls only if the user will stay within the limit.

HTH,
Jeff

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