Cursoring: Addition of string-encoded equivalents of JSON cursor parameters starts 1/11/2010

[Wilhelm Bierbaum]

In response to complaints we've been receiving about cursor IDs being

difficult to deal with because of their length (for example,

JavaScript can't deal with them -- see http://bit.ly/cursooooors), 

we're adding string equivalents of next_cursor and previous cursor to

those methods that return cursors when the JSON format is used.

A detailed account of the problems with big numbers and JavaScript

can be found at http://bit.ly/tooManyNumbers.

If you strictly parse your top-level returned JSON (which seems

unlikely given the spirit of the standard), you may need to make

some adjustments to your code.

Where the JSON with cursor parameters used to look like

    {

    "users":[{<!-- ... omitted records ... -->}}, ...], 

    "next_cursor":319261365477361289,

    "previous_cursor":0

    }

it will now return equivalent string values for next_cursor and

previous_cursor called next_cursor_str and previous_cursor_str,

respectively:

    {

    "users":[{<!-- ... omitted records ... -->}}, ...], 

    "next_cursor":319261365477361289,

    "next_cursor_str":"319261365477361289",

    "previous_cursor":0,

    "previous_cursor":"0"

    }

We hope this helps out those of you who were previously experiencing

trouble with cursors.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them

to twitter-development-talk. 

Thanks!

--

Wilhelm Bierbaum

Twitter Platform Team