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copied!<p>Twitter is famous for its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Failwhale.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Fail Whale</a>, and the <a href="http://apiwiki.twitter.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Twitter API</a> gets a failing grade too; it's horrible.</p> <p>Twitter <a href="http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-Search-API-Method:-trends-current" rel="nofollow noreferrer">trends current Search API method</a> response can be expressed (using just two trends to simplify the examples) in canonical, normalized JSON form as:</p> <pre><code>{ "as_of":1268069036, "trends":[ {"name":"Happy Women's Day","query":"\"Happy Women's Day\" OR \"Women's Day\""}, {"name":"#MusicMonday","query":"#MusicMonday"},{"name":"#MM","query":"#MM"} ] } </code></pre> <p>The <code>as_of</code> date is in Unix time, the number of seconds since 1/1/1970.</p> <p>In Go, this can be described by:</p> <pre><code>type Trend struct { Name string Query string } type Current struct { As_of int64 Trends []Trend } </code></pre> <p>Twitter mangles the canonical, normalized JSON form to become:</p> <pre><code>{ "as_of":1268069036, "trends":{ "2010-03-08 17:23:56":[ {"name":"Happy Women's Day","query":"\"Happy Women's Day\" OR \"Women's Day\""}, {"name":"#MusicMonday","query":"#MusicMonday"} ] } } </code></pre> <p>Sometimes, Twitter returns this equivalent JSON form.</p> <pre><code>{ "trends":{ "2010-03-08 17:23:56":[ {"name":"Happy Women's Day","query":"\"Happy Women's Day\" OR \"Women's Day\""}, {"name":"#MusicMonday","query":"#MusicMonday"} ] }, "as_of":1268069036 } </code></pre> <p><code>"2010-03-08 17:23:56":</code> is a JSON object name. However, it's -- nonsensically -- a string form of <code>as_of</code>.</p> <p>If we replace <code>"2010-03-08 17:23:56":</code> by the object name <code>"ntrends":</code> (for nested trends), overwriting the redundant <code>as_of</code> string time, we have the following revised Twitter JSON form:</p> <pre><code>{ "as_of":1268069036, "trends":{ "ntrends":[ {"name":"Happy Women's Day","query":"\"Happy Women's Day\" OR \"Women's Day\""}, {"name":"#MusicMonday","query":"#MusicMonday"} ] } } </code></pre> <p>It's easy to scan the Twitter JSON form for <code>"as_of":</code>, read the following number as the <code>as_of</code> Unix time, and convert it to JSON name form e.g.:</p> <pre><code>var aoUnixTime int64 // insert code to find and convert as_of Unix time to aoUnixTime aoName := time.SecondsToUTC(aoUnix).Format(`"2006-01-02 15:04:05":`) </code></pre> <p>Now we can scan the Twitter JSON form for the <code>aoName</code> value and replace it with <code>"ntrends":</code> to get the revised Twitter JSON form.</p> <p>In Go, the revised Twitter JSON form can be described by:</p> <pre><code>type Trend struct { Name string Query string } type NTrends struct { NTrends []Trend } type Current struct { As_of int64 Trends NTrends } </code></pre> <p>Note: the first character of the struct and field identifiers are uppercase so that they can be exported.</p> <p>I've programmed and tested this approach and it seems to work. Since this is a school project for you, I haven't published my code.</p>

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