in_reply_to_status_id validation has changed

[Doug Williams]

Before today, the value of the in_reply_to_status_id field was validated by two requirements,:

1) It was set to a valid status_id
2) The valid status_id's author from #1 was @replied in the update (@reply here is the old definition where "@user" was at the beginning of the tweet).

If the value of in_reply_to_status_id did not meet these criteria, it was silently dropped.

We have relaxed requirement #2 to permit mentions, meaning that the user of the referenced tweet needs to be included somewhere in the update. Enjoy the new data!

Thanks,
Doug
--

Doug Williams
Twitter Platform Support
http://twitter.com/dougw

[P Burrows]

Is there an easy way to get the screen name of an in_reply_to_status_id for purposes of linking to the original tweet?

[Doug Williams]

The statuses/show method is perfect [1].

1. http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-statuses%C2%A0show

Thanks,
Doug

----------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Williams | Platform Support | Twitter, Inc.

539 Bryant St. Suite 402, San Francisco, CA 94107 http://twitter.com/dougw

[P Burrows]

Well, sure. But, I was thinking more of building a url ala:

http://twitter.com/demosthe/status/1659019581

--
Patrick Burrows
http://www.CleverHumans.com

[Doug Williams]

I was suggesting using the call to statuses/show to build this URL programmatically, like with this psuedo-code:

$status =  new Status( "http://twitter.com/statuses/show/" + $in_reply_to_status_id+ ".xml")
$screen_name =  $status->get_screen_name();
echo "http://twitter.com/" + $screen_name + "/status/" + $in_reply_to_status_id;

Thanks,
Doug
--

Doug Williams
Twitter Platform Support
http://twitter.com/dougw

[Nick]

This is excellent news! (Sorry, I'm a little behind.)

However, documentation still asserts that the @mention must be at the
beginning of the tweet (maybe someone just needs to update this wiki
page: http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-REST-API-Method%3A-statuses%C2%A0update)
and the Twitter web interface still appears to follow this rule.

That is, if I click reply from the web, it starts the tweet with the
@mention at the very beginning. And if I move the @mention to
somewhere else in the tweet (to avoid the #fixreplies bug and let my
other followers see it), in_reply_to is silently dropped. From the
web interface, this makes it impossible to send a reply that your
followers can both see and follow to the conversation thread.

Is the web interface just behind the times? Or are we encouraged not
to use this newly-relaxed feature?

Thanks,
Nick

[Doug Williams]

I have updated the documentation to reflect this change. Thanks for pointing out the error.

Thanks,
Doug