Not receiving up to date information from the API

API
1

Hello!

I have recently been working on a system that reads follower information from the Twitch API. However, I have noticed that this information is not always up to date.

I have been testing by using a second Twitch account to follower my main twitch account. My application has been registered, and I am sending my application Client ID with every request, so I should not be rate limited.

Sometimes I am able to detect the new follower immediately from the API, but other times, I wont be able to see the new follower for multiple minutes. I am also not seeing the API update when checking directly through my web browser by going to: https://api.twitch.tv/kraken/channels/jessewerner/follows

Is there another method I should be using to access live follower information? Is there any reason this would not be up to date for me?

Thanks!

  • Jesse Werner
2

You are probably getting cached data at times, depending upon which node you are pushed to when you hit the API.

3

Thank you for the quick reply!

I have my request set in my application to disregard the cache on the local machine. Is there a way to make the request to the node to be up to date? I have noticed that other services aren’t having issues detecting my followers live.

4

Unfortunately, there isn’t a way that I am aware of. In the standard there is no requirement for a server to honor the “no-cache” directive in the HTTP request. I don’t work for Twitch, so I can only comment generally, but I would believe that the followers DB gets a ton of hits and takes time to propagate perhaps at times.

There is also the possibility that there is a caching issue that is occurring at this time, something like that happened to TMI for a couple/few weeks (there were 9-30 minute delays in data) and the Twitch Staff resolved that issue.

5

/kraken/channel/:login/follows is cached for 5 minutes, and so the data being a couple minutes out of date is expected

6

It’s not the cache on the local machine at fault as @Fugiman says it’s cached on the server for ~5 minutes.

Most of the Twitch end points have some form of caching on them