Inconsistent data type for targeting_value in targeting criterion

[dodnert]

Looking at the documentation for the methods that add targeting criteria to a line item, I’ve noticed that in some cases the targeting_value field is an integer value and in other cases, it is a string value. For example, on the PUT targeting criteria method the sample response at the bottom of the page shows that the criterion named “Male” has "targeting_value": 1 while the criterion named “snowboarding” has "targeting_value": "snowboarding".

A situation where a field of a Json object may have different data types depending on context creates a real inconvenience for developers using certain Json parsing libraries (e.g. Spray). Can Twitter please eliminate this inconsistency?

[hector_borras]

Hi @dodnert,

I don’t know the exact problem, but I think with your twitter library for your code language that should be transparent for the developer.

What kind of code language are you using?

Regards!

[dodnert]

Our application is written in Scala. We are using the Spray framework to make HTTP requests to Twitter APIs and to parse the Json objects in the response.

[hector_borras]

Hi @dodnert,

I’m not really familiar with that language, so I think i can’t help you, sorry.

Hopefully someone could help you.

Regards!

[dodnert]

Thank you for trying to help, @hector_borras. However, I don’t really consider this a Scala issue. I consider this to be a poor design decision in the Twitter Ads API. Inconsistency in the data type of a named field is a bad idea. There’s no reason why this field could not have consistently been a string value. Then, for those targeting types that expect an integer value, the string can easily be converted to an integer. The logic for how to interpret the targeting_value can live in the code that deals with the targeting criterion after it has been parsed from Json. This is a much better design approach than having to give the Json parser an awareness that a field could be either one of two data types.

[dodnert]

I’ve found that I can work around the inconsistency by declaring the Scala data type of the field to be Either[String,Int]. The Spray Json parser handles this implicitly.

Nevertheless, I still consider the type inconsistency to be a poor API design choice.

[c_r_w]

Howdy @dodnert,

gender is actually a string as well, per the docs you linked. The only two targeting_values I could find that are integers are network_activation_duration_lt and network_activation_duration_gte.

I tend to agree with you. Overall, we have tried to make targeting_values strings, however those two seem to have slipped through. I’ll file a ticket but no promises on getting that changed in this revision of the API.

Thanks!

[dodnert]

Thank you for the reply @c_r_w. In my testing of the Ads API, targeting criteria with the gender targeting type are returned with an integer targeting_value, not with a string.

[c_r_w]

Hi @dodnert,

You are right, I misunderstood your issue. I’ll file a separate ticket for this issue.

Thanks!