weird Twitter API behaviour

I know sure is it me or everyone, I have a following code

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.xml?screen_name=barbara_volkwyn

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.xml?user_id=248623669

Apparently according to Twitter api, 开发者_如何转开发user with screen_name = "barbara_volkwyn" has the user id = 248623669, however, when I run the above API call I get totally different result, one thing that's even weirder is if I try to run the second API call, the users object contain in the returned result is not even the same user.

I wonder anyone has the same problem, feel free to give it a try.

Regards, Andy.

your userID of barbara_volkwyn isn't valid. It should be: 264882189 You can fetch userID's trough the api or with https://tweeterid.com/

The user_ids reported by the Search API aren't the same as the user_ids used in the Twitter REST API -- unsure if that's where you found the user_id 248623669 or not though.

A timeline contains tweets which in turn contain embedded (but cached) user objects, usually reflecting the state of the user at the time the Tweet was published. Sometimes users change their screen_names, so a user by the name of @barbara_volkwyn might be user_id 1234 one day and user_id 5678 the next day, while the tweets that belonged to user_id 1234 will always belong to user_id 1234, regardless of the screen_name.

The user_id for @babara_volkwyn according to the REST API is 264882189. It's entirely possible that someone held the same screen name but a different user_id at another time. The only way to ever be certain about the identity of a Twitter user is to refer to them by their REST API user_id -- screen_names are transitory and can be modified by the end-user at any time.

As I mentioned, cached user objects used within statuses can become stale -- the most reliable source for up-to-date information about a single user account is the user/show API method. The most reliable source for up-to-date information on recent Tweets by an account is the statuses/user_timeline method.

The embedded objects work for most scenarios, but if you're looking for maximum accuracy, the distinct resources are best.

Thanks, Taylor.