Stream filters

[scruffyfox]

With the increasing size of App.net, and "bot" accounts, the request for filters commonly gets requested.

Currently, the only option is to filter client side, which as many developer will know, (on mobile especially) its very nasty (see: http://s.scruffyfox.me/y7q.png)

I don't know if you already have something planned, but filters is something that I get requested pretty much every day.

The way I propose we filter is the same way we do filtering on app streams, by using the filter endpoint.

We could use the filter endpoint to create our filters, be it based on client, keyword, hashtags, mention count or anything, we could then have a query parameter for the stream endpoints, such as

https://alpha-api.app.net/stream/0/posts/stream?access_token=abc&filter=x,x,x (where x = filter_id)

This means the query parameter could be applied to any stream, and use the filter endpoint which already exists, one change we may potentially have to make on filters would be to have a type because develop accounts may already use the filtering for app streams, so we would need a way of distinguishing between a client filter set and a server filter set (filters for things such as push service)

I know filtering is a difficult process to do on the API side, but its even more difficult on mobile

One limitation we could have on filtering is max filter size for a stream, say 5 as an example, to prevent over the top processing.

Thoughts/feedback would be appreciated

[kosso]

+1