First off, i am very happy that Twitch is reducing the amount of data that the New API Follower endpoint provides. The previous API’s sent so much superfluous data.
However, the new API Follower Endpoint has one bit of redundant data that is just glaring back at me.
When I make a request for who is following my channel, why does each and every entry need a copy of MY channel’s User ID in it? Wouldn’t that information be obvious, since I am requesting the list of people following me?
Secondly, with how much redundant data has been removed from the Follower response, why keep the returned data limited to 100? As has been mentioned in a previous thread on the topic, Twitter’s API allows for a simple array of UserIDs, and packs in 1000 or more into a single response.
For example, my channel has around 12000 followers. Every so often I do a full pulldown of all the followers to see who is still following, and to detect if there were unfollows. With the 100 follower limit, I still have to download 100 max followers at a time, which is 120 requests.
If there was a way I could tell the endpoint “just send me the IDs of users following me, sans-follow date and my own twitch id, and send them to me in bulk 1000 at a time” i could cut my requests down from 120 to just 12.
That being said, I do not know what types of processes are running on Twitch’s end to gather said data, so there could be more going on from the data collection side of things than I realize.
Personally, being able to add two flags to the Request URL, “to_id = false” and “followed_at = false”, to clip that data from the response, and just send an array of User IDs in follow order (plus more than just 100 at a time) would be help to optimize deep pull requests for follower lists.