NAME

Net::Twitter::Role::AutoCursor - Help transition to cursor based access to friends_ids and followers_ids methods

VERSION

version 4.00001

SYNOPSIS

use Net::Twitter;
my $nt = Net::Twitter->new(
    traits => [qw/AutoCursor API::RESTv1_1 RetryOnError OAuth/],
    # additional ags...
);

# Get friends_ids or followers_ids without worrying about cursors
my $ids = $nt->followers_ids;

my $nt = Net::Twitter->new(
    traits => [
        qw/API::RESTv1_1 RetryOnError OAuth/
        AutoCursor => { max_calls => 32 },
        AutoCursor => {
            max_calls      => 4,
            force_cursor   => 1,
            array_accessor => 'users',
            methods        => [qw/friends followers/],
        },
    ],
    # additional args
);

# works with any Twitter call that takes a cursor parameter
my $friends = $nt->friends;

DESCRIPTION

On 25-Mar-2011, Twitter announced a change to friends_ids and followers_ids API methods:

[Soon] followers/ids and friends/ids is being updated to set the cursor to -1
if it isn't supplied during the request. This changes the default response
format

This will break a lot of existing code. The AutoCursor trait was created to help users transition to cursor based access for these methods.

With default parameters, the AutoCursor trait attempts a non-cursored call for friends_ids and followers_ids. If it detects a cursored response from Twitter, it continues to call the underlying Twitter API method, with the next cursor, until it has received all results or 16 calls have been made (yielding 80,000 results). It returns an ARRAY reference to the combined results.

If the cursor parameter is passed to friends_ids or followers_ids, Net::Twitter assumes the user is handling cursoring and does not modify behavior or results.

The AutoCursor trait is parameterized, allowing it to work with any Twitter API method that expects cursors, returning combined results for up to the maximum number of calls specified.

AutoCursor can be applied multiple times to handle different sets of API methods.

PARAMETERS

max_calls

An integer specifying the maximum number of API calls to make. Default is 16.

max_calls can be overridden on a per-call basis by passing a max_calls argument to the API method.

force_cursor

If true, when the caller does not provide a cursor parameter, AutoCursor will use up to max_calls cursored calls rather than attempting an initial non-cursored call. Default is 0.

array_accessor

The name of the HASH key used to access the ARRAY ref of results in the data structure returned by Twitter. Default is ids.

methods

A reference to an ARRAY containing the names of Twitter API methods to which AutoCursor will be applied.

METHOD CALLS

Synthetic parameter -max_calls can be passed for individual method calls to override the default:

$r = $nt->followers_ids({ -max_calls => 200 }); # get up to 1 million ids

Synthetic parameter -force_cursor can be passed to override the force_cursor default.

AUTHOR

Marc Mims <marc@questright.com>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2011 Marc Mims

LICENSE

This library is free software and may be distributed under the same terms as perl itself.