Problems parsing lookup.xml, sometimes a message "download failed" appeared for unknowing reason

marcelolmo1 · 2012-10-31T14:10:22.000Z

Hi guys, I’m trying to parse collections of ids to get the whole information about the users via xml.

Sometimes my parser says “the download failed” and I have to reset my parser in order to begin to download the users again.

Here’s a sample of what I’m trying to parse :

https://api.twitter.com/1/users/lookup.xml?user_id=301019938,360628903,239176161,127832760,316417443,846248118,417394404,108674341,825520728,219953913,846252498,846221726,302678415,803360834,367834956,411609113,185262897,302288278,839808349,202547636,815805402,245134122,329776243,357605702,393656795,846275605,730203734,461043094,610156243,846239982,782342095,249638917,846239712,553682009,491500190,817592436,540581793,804555403,273601502,33700236,121116335,286794786,842200926,255224559,287205031,820370852,292280070,506633685,846239695,821843582,846181788,179176205,261432524,313896608,600483026,631224681,801260310,846222278,317911633,801207360,846210780,839814906,826030272,189271203,842374093,339891406,538577778,621105959,236809745,840440917,846209149,800012017,846162870,376725955,252991409,846164556,294724563,513779875,224768546,747786655,239034481,815230357,114478024,725741966,407184538,548796487,737631469,376074241,209174548,846168426,836156923,71088435,271979446,593331945,225490052,525741584,222466407,486008119,159473577,846158198

Sometimes it says “download failed” and stop working and sometimes says nothing and runs fine.

I don’t know why this is happening. I wrote a sleep() sentence to download the info more slowly but it didn’t work.

Any ideas about why this is happening?

Many thanks in advance!!

episod · 2012-10-31T18:45:29.000Z

While I can’t necessarily help you with the tool you’re using, I can help you with the API your tool is using:

Are you using auth when connecting? (Highly recommended). Are you checking for rate limiting scenarios? (If your requests are unauthenticated, you can only make 150 per hour on your IP address to the v1 API). Are you paying attention to any other HTTP status codes that may be thrown? This method is known to throw a HTTP 502 when overloaded at times.