Annoying little problem with Json Responses

[TSErence]

I feel there is a problem with the current twitter Json responses, mainly concerning retweets.

Let’s say someone retweets a particularly long status, for example, a status which has 140 characters.
If this tweet comes up within the stream, or indeed on a timeline request to the API, the “text” field in the Json response will start with the standard RT @Username.

"text":"RT @ManUtd: #mufc and Birmingham City have agreed a one-month loan deal for Jesse Lingard. He can play for the Blues up to and including 20\u2026"

However, this takes up some characters at the start of this tweet. Thus it means that the end of the tweet will be severed off in the response as is the case seen above where the remaining characters filled with the unicode for elipsis.

My Question is why?
Could you not just extend the response return the whole tweet?
I AM aware that the original tweet is embedded in the response, though this no longer has the
"RT @Username" at the beginning, seen below.

"text":"#mufc and Birmingham City have agreed a one-month loan deal for Jesse Lingard. He can play for the Blues up to and including 20 October."

It would be much less hassle for developers like myself if the original retweet text does not cut at the 140 character limit.

[TSErence]

I hope this doesn’t portray me as “Lazy” it’s pretty simple to just hard code a “RT @ screen_name” of the user object of the retweeted_status object but I see it as unnecessary baggage for the developer at the moment

[episod]

API v1.1 is still very similar to API v1. API v1’s method of handling “native retweets” had to be backwards-compatible with how tweets were conveyed in the API prior to the existence of the feature. The structure today is still very similar for that reason.

It’s only baggage if you want to display the tweet with "RT " proceeding it. There are other visual treatments you can do that don’t involve using the “legacy” RT shorthand.

You may want to take note of the [node:142]:

Retweet Indicator If the Tweet being displayed is a Retweet, the name of the user who Retweeted it and the Retweet icon must be displayed above or under the Tweet text. e.g., "Retweeted by Josh Brewer". The name must link to the Retweeting user's profile, unless your application is displaying Tweets on a mobile platform that has clear physical or technical limitations.

[TSErence]

Thank you for the reply, being new to the whole API meant that I didn’t really look at v1 at all and I now understand the reason for this.

However, baggage, I believe, it is not. Maybe in the future there may be chance to deprecate the need for backward compatibility to previous APIs. Until an event similar I guess it is the developer’s responsibility on the way to express the retweet to accommodate their needs.