Direct_messages/events/show not returning the direct message even when it exists

[martani_net]

Hi,

I’m trying to read a direct message through the direct_messages/events/show API but it’s returning

{“errors”:[{“code”:34,“message”:“Sorry, that page does not exist.”}]}

Similarly, the direct_messages/events/destroy API returns the same error. (The same error is seen on Twurl and through the client library I’m using.)

I can see and delete the messages on twitter.com and the DM id I’m passing to the API is correct.

The messages are less than 2 months old and my account has barely a 100 direct messages. The documentation does not mention any restriction that I think I’d be hitting.

Can you please help to debug this further?

Thanks.

[abraham]

How do you know the DM ID is correct? Does the list endpoint work for you?

I used GET direct_messages/events/list with twurl and it returned a list of events. I then got an ID off of one of the events and used it in GET direct_messages/events/show and it returned the event object.

[martani_net]

I know the DM ID is correct in 2 ways:

1. I have the DM ID from my Twitter archive
2. I can inspect the private messages page in twitter.com (where I can see the message and delete it) and find the DM ID from there.

[andypiper]

The API supports 30 days of history. Is this within 30 days?

[martani_net]

I suspected that.

However this limit is not mentioned in any of the documentation pages for direct_messages/events/show or direct_messages/events/destroy. Only direct_messages/events/list mentions the 30 days limit!

Also, this limit seems to be new (probably from last week), can you point me to any announcement about that?

Thanks.

[andypiper]

The previous limit in the legacy API was based on all of the conversations in your Direct Message inbox and was volume-based. The updated API, launched in April 2017 in beta, updated this to 30 days of history across all of the conversations, with no volume limit.

This is also covered in the migration guide that was published at the start of the year.

[martani_net]

I have been using the new API since June and it was able to delete DMs older than 30 days. It seems that retiring the old API did have a side effect on the new API which is quite unexpected.

I might have been misreading the migration guide where it says:

The method for accessing individual Direct Messages with GET direct_messages/events/show remains the same

Remaining the same reads as this new change wouldn’t impact the old behavior of the API!

And finally on that same migration guide, direct_messages/events/destroy focuses on the change from POST to DELETE without any mention of the restriction on message age.

I realize there is probably no going back on the decision to restrict access to 30 days of DMs, but can we at least have clear documentation on these limits?

[LeBraat]

Hello @martani_net - We have run several tests internally to sanity check this situation and have been able to both show and destroy direct messages that are older than 30 days, meaning that our docs are accurate.

Our hunch is that this DM that you are trying to access/delete has already been deleted.

[martani_net]

Thanks for following up @LeBraat, here is my test:

This is the Direct Messages conversation on twitter.com:

The message id (one of them) in that conversation is 1023359154424098822, I get it from the my Twitter archive and also can confirm by inspecting the DM page on twitter.com

This is the Twurl response for a direct_messages/events/show.json query:

As you can see from the conversation, the message was created on July 28th and hence is older than 30 days.

My question is:

• Should this message be accessible for show and destroy APIs?
• If so, are there any restrictions for these APIs (other than rate limits) because previous responses sounded like the only messages that are created in the last 30 days are accessible!

[LeBraat]

Sorry for any confusion here. The GET direct_messages/events/list endpoint is the only one of the three discussed in this topic that is limited to 30 days.

That message should be available with both endpoints that you listed. Have you tried to use show or delete with other DMs from around the same time as the one that you are testing with here?

[martani_net]

Interesting, I’m able to delete other direct messages (older from another account) and ones that are more 30 days old from the account exhibiting this issue. However, those specific DMs are not accessible to read or delete yet they show up on Twitter.com.

For the purposes of my original question: show and destroy on direct messages are not limited to 30 days and that’s all I needed to know.

You can close this thread if it doesn’t make sense debugging why those specific 5 messages are not accessible.

Thanks.

[LeBraat]

This is definitely a curious case, as I can’t explain why the direct messages are still showing up in the UI, but all other signs point to those messages having been deleted.

Thank you for your patience with this topic.

[system]

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.