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In the guts of OAuth I discover the field oauth_timestamp, for which the specified behavior is apparently that all requests that contain a lower oauth_timestamp value than the highest one ever received should be denied. As I am trying to queue up a number of Twitter API requests for processing, and potentially out-of-generated-order processing for that matter, this nasty little item may really ruin my day.

But, Twitter being Twitter, there is hope: the possibility that they have never actually written code to enforce the specified behavior of oauth_timestamp. Which would be lovely, since I object to it violently.

So, does anybody happen to know whether the Twitter API actually enforces oauth_timestamp's specified behavior?

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  • How about generating the OAuth parameters when the request is actually done?
    – Arvin
    Commented Feb 11, 2011 at 21:06
  • @Arvin: It's more effort than doing it when queueing them up, but not unreasonably so. The problem is that, because I have multiple worker processes handling the queue, it doesn't eliminate the issue, it just converts it to a matter of a race condition. So I'd like to know whether the issue actually exists in context before going to the effort.
    – chaos
    Commented Feb 11, 2011 at 21:42

1 Answer 1

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Twitter restricts oauth_timestamp to be within five minutes on either side of GMT. Outside of that 10 minute window and the requests will fail.

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  • Okay, that's cool. Are you saying, then, that it does not enforce the ascending order constraint?
    – chaos
    Commented Feb 12, 2011 at 4:58
  • I'm almost certain Twitter does not care about order. Just as long as the timestamp is fresh.
    – abraham
    Commented Feb 12, 2011 at 19:19
  • Any links to Twitter docs that state this? I can't find any.
    – Kyle Heironimus
    Commented Apr 22, 2011 at 16:03
  • groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/twitter-development-talk/…
    – abraham
    Commented Apr 22, 2011 at 16:55

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