11:46 am


Gold
June 30, 2017

Feed field named "entry_id" in HTTP API responses is not a true ID.
It is merely a counter, because it resets every time a channel is cleared.
Problems:
1. As counters, these are almost useless since they are not unique and can't be used for addressing.
2. If they can't be used then why ThingSpeak exposes them at all?
Suggestions:
1. Make them true IDs and provide tools for using them.
2. Drop them from ThingSpeak API altogether to avoid confusion.
12:00 pm


MathWorks
May 1, 2016

Thank you for your suggestions. The ThingSpeak team has thought about these and many, many more over years of running the service.
The entry_id exists for historical reasons. For what it is worth, we have a number of users who rely on it. Removing this entirely will impact existing users who need to reprogram their devices that may be deployed remotely.
We recommend that users do not use the entry_id field. However, at this time we do not see a solution to eliminate it without causing our users pain.
Like I mentioned in your other thread - data stored on ThingSpeak is time series data. At this time we believe the appropriate way to index it is using the start and end time.
2:01 pm


Gold
June 30, 2017

Hello, Vinod
It is definitely a good reason to retain this field.
Why don't you make it a "true" ID then and avoid further confusion?
I see many cases where timestamps are not adequate and
true IDs would be helpful.
One such example I already mentioned in my other post
about incremental data processing.
Regards
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