Group DM support via the APIs?

[DvideBy0]

It has been over a year now. Is there any timeline for this?

[andypiper]

This is not currently on our priority list for enabling as a public API due to some of the complexities but it is a known request and remains on the list to evaluate.

[spark911uk]

Any updates on this? Seems odd that it’s not there.

[andypiper]

No updates or changes to announce - we’re focused on what we can enable using Twitter Kit in Fabric at present, as well as the forthcoming changes to Tweet objects that we announced a while back.

[Shinmera]

Access to group DMs is a central aspect of an application I stared working on recently to allow viewing DMs similar to an instant messenger. Only having access to single-recipient DMs is very constraining for that.

Could you elaborate a bit on what makes it a complex issue to expose as a public REST API?

[evilhackerdude]

Hey, back when I asked for group DM support I was building a prototype that was supposed to make use of twitter’s wonderful social graph and run on top of DMs and group DMs.

Sadly I think there won’t be any Group DM support in the API, at least not in a capacity that you can rely on now. I would recommend relying on another group messaging API. Should Twitter release a Group DM API it shouldn’t be much effort to add support for that.

[Shinmera]

Well, largely the point of my application was that it would not require users to register and rely on yet another separate service and instead allow them to reuse their twitter accounts and services.

[evilhackerdude]

Yup, that’s also why we initially built our prototype on Twitter.

[andypiper]

Could you elaborate a bit on what makes it a complex issue to expose as a public REST API?

Absolutely. Group DMs use a significantly different model to the previous format, so for a start it is there is effort required to document and describe. Secondly, we haven’t done any work around anticipating additional load and capacity needs driven from other clients on those endpoints. Thirdly, opening up any new API endpoints can sometimes lead to unforeseen behaviours if they are called in unexpected ways, which we’d need to more thoroughly test and account for. Finally, as I mentioned previously, we need to prioritise; the majority of what you will have seen around changes to the developer platform in the past year has been focused on Fabric, and embedded timelines and Tweets - so we can’t just “flip a switch” to open up an endpoint, much as it might seem that way.

I totally appreciate that this is disappointing if this is a feature you’re looking for, but I’m not currently aware of a timeline for enabling this.

The existing DM APIs have not changed and will continue to work for one-to-one DM conversations.

[Shinmera]

I see. Thank you for your response. I suppose I’ll focus on one-to-one chat for now and hope that groups will make it into the API some time.

[duntmatter2012]

Really need this for my app. Hope adding interest here will help bump it up the backlog.

Cheers

[elronxenu]

It’s a couple of years now since group DMs were introduced, and still no support in the API. This is really important to have because group DMs are active conversations with individuals, and 3rd party applications give no indication when one is created.

[andypiper]

This is not a current priority but we hear your request and interest.

[VISAV2]

Appreciate this isn’t a current priority, but just wanted to register my interest

For me, having feature parity between the public API and what someone can do by logging in to the Twitter website manually is important and this is one of the more major missing pieces.

[rfsbsb]

I would like to add my request to this list. It might not seem as important as other features, but I use it regularly and I’m missing on my third party app.

[andypiper]

You can keep an eye on the API roadmap. No current plans for group Direct Messages. However, we have just released a major update to the Direct Message API and will be retiring the legacy endpoints next year.

[rfsbsb]

Hi @andypiper, thanks for your quick reply. It’s a bummer we don’t have this API item, but I’ll take a look on those links you’ve shared.
Thanks again.

[andypiper]