My latest Twitter status update has the URL http://twitter.com/dinomite/status/1743967905 Does anyone know if there is any rhyme or reason behind the number 1743967905? It looks to me as though it might be a sequentially-assigned number for all Twitter users; I certainly haven't update 1.7b times, but all of Twitter might be around that. Anyone know?
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313answers:
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A:
That would probably be the primary key in the status table. That URL format is used to look at a specific tweet.
Note that http://twitter.com/dinomite is the actual feed.
Also, based on how it seems to grow incrementally, this is probably an IDENTITY column or similar.
John Gietzen
2009-05-09 17:15:49
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A:
Yes, they're sequential.
One of the things it's helpful for is when writing a Twitter client, you can ask for anything newer than the last number you're already seen, so that you don't get and have to parse duplicates.
great_llama
2009-05-09 17:17:24
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A:
According to the Twitter API docs it is the numerical ID of the status. I'd guess it's unique and sequential across all users, but I don't know for sure. If you need to know more take a look here for the official docs.
Steve Haigh
2009-05-09 17:18:49
Thanks for the link to the API. Not sure if I got it though. If my rss feed url is http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/10179032.rss, then does that mean my numerical ID is 10179032 ?If so, according to the docs (http://twitter.com/statuses/show/id.format), I would get an xml feed using http://twitter.com/statuses/show/orgicus.xml, right ? If I try that I get an error node: <error>No status found with that ID.</error>, same if I use the numerial ID instead of the username. Where am I going wrong ?
George Profenza
2009-06-23 17:17:09