retweeted always returing as false in /1/statuses/user_timeline.json

[Michael Babker]

Hi there,

I have a Twitter module I'm improving upon which pulls tweets from /1/statuses/user_timeline.json.  An issue that I've noticed is that over the last couple of days, tweets I've retweeted using the retweet link on twitter.com have continued to display as "retweeted": false in the JSON.

Can someone tell me if this is normal behavior or if it's an issue with the API?

Thanks!

[Matt Harris]

Hi Michael,

Soon after launching those fields we identified some problems with
them so had to disable them. That means the behavior you are seeing is
expected right now. When the fields are enabled again we'll announce
it to this mailing list.

Best,
Matt

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Matt Harris
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[Michael B.]

Thanks for the info Matt, and I look forward to when they are enabled
again.

> Developer Advocate, Twitterhttp://twitter.com/themattharris- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Orian Marx (@orian)]

At this point there are a number of fields on various objects returned
by Twitter that should be considered unreliable (mostly on user
objects). It might be time for Twitter to consider a better solution
than just returning unreliable data, such as either stripping out the
fields, giving them an attribute such as fieldstatus=deprecated or
fieldstatus=disabled. These "expected" behaviors are only expected by
the engineers on Twitter's end and I've seen lots of posts on the
mailinglist where people have had to question why they were getting
unreliable data.

[Carlos M.]

Any update on this issue? I don't see any news in the mailing list :-/
Cheers,
Carlos

On Sep 4, 8:27 pm, "Orian Marx (@orian)" <or...@orianmarx.com> wrote:
> At this point there are a number of fields on various objects returned
> by Twitter that should be considered unreliable (mostly on user
> objects). It might be time for Twitter to consider a better solution
> than just returning unreliable data, such as either stripping out the
> fields, giving them an attribute such as fieldstatus=deprecated or
> fieldstatus=disabled. These "expected" behaviors are only expected by
> the engineers on Twitter's end and I've seen lots of posts on the
> mailinglist where people have had to question why they were getting
> unreliable data.
>
> On Sep 3, 12:25 pm, Matt Harris <thematthar...@twitter.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi Michael,
>
> > Soon after launching those fields we identified some problems with
> > them so had to disable them. That means the behavior you are seeing is
> > expected right now. When the fields are enabled again we'll announce
> > it to this mailing list.
>
> > Best,
> > Matt
>
> > On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Michael Babker <mbab...@flbab.com> wrote:
> > > Hi there,
>
> > > I have a Twitter module I'm improving upon which pulls tweets from
> > > /1/statuses/user_timeline.json.  An issue that I've noticed is that over the

> > > last couple of days, tweets I'veretweetedusing the retweet link on

[Carlos M.]

Guys, any update in this issue? still getting all the retweeted values
False.

[Michael B.]

Still nothing. I've gotten around this by searching in the returned
object for retweeted_status, and if it's set, pulling information from
there.

[Matt Harris]

This was discussed in another thread:

    http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/22ee0fd2e6892bd7/1a25f5b8165037ac

and tracked in this ticket:

    http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/detail?id=1891

In summary the retweeted_status field remains false and instead you should use the include_my_retweet=1 parameter when requesting timelines.

The include_my_retweet parameter will cause a new datapoint "current_user_retweet" to be included in the status if the current user has retweeted it. It contains the status ID of the retweet the authenticating user created, which is also the status ID to destroy if you wish to undo the retweet.

Example:

    "current_user_retweet": {

      "id": 26815871309,

      "id_str": "26815871309"

    },

To know if a Tweet has been retweeted by other users you would need to either observe the value of retweet_count or make a request to:

    http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/retweets/:id (docs: http://dev.twitter.com/doc/get/statuses/retweets/:id)

If the retweet_count is null it means either the Tweet has not been retweeted or the retweet_count field is disabled. 

For the moment though the field is disabled as we work on it's stability. When it is re-enabled we will Tweet on @twitterapi to let you know.

Best,

Matt