Twitter API: Up and Running

Appendix A. Twitter API Reference

Don’t have time to reread all the prior poetry about the Twitter API? Fine. Here’s a methods cheat sheet that gives you the basics you will need to program your Twitter application. The hierarchy listed here is based on the server paths used by Twitter—the technical order, based on path and method name—rather than the functional groups I used in Chapter 4 of this book.

Twitter tracks two kinds of rate limits: one for unauthenticated requests (which is not possible for the methods that require authentication), and the other for requests made per account when authentication is used. POST method requests, used whenever you need to make a change to the server, don’t cost anything. There are also a few methods that are exempt from the rate limit.

For more information on the current nuances of using the API, check out the Twitter API FAQ.

Note

In this appendix, I use the .xml format to describe the methods. Remember, you can substitute .json for all of the Twitter API methods and .atom or .rss for some of them.

Status Methods

Delete a Tweet

Removes a single status update from the Twitter timeline.

Path		/statuses/destroy/id.xml
Requires authentication		Yes (the account owns the existing update).
Charged against rate limit		No.
HTTP method type		POST or DELETE.
Required parameters
	id	Provides the record ID for an existing status update owned by the authenticating user. The id parameter is passed as part of the URL request.
Successful output		See Publishing.

View Followers

Returns ...