User name or User Id?

Instagram Marketing
#1

Hi!
Which is better to use as source: a list of “User names” or a list of “Use Ids”?
Which of them counts less in actions numbers?

Thanks

#2

Which of them counts less in actions numbers?

what do you mean by that? Mostly jarvee scrape username on their many module, so it’s easy to copy paste from one module to another. But user Ids are powerful, since even if any user change their username for any reason, then still your source will be valid for scrapping. But it’s time consuming for me, so I mostly go with usernames. It’s easy. But if your source change their username frequently then you must go with userid.

#3

@YodaMaster, Thanks!
I have a list which has both of them: User names and User Ids

I don’t know how Jarvee works in depth.
Does it search first for user name and convert it to user Id and follow it? (2 actions)
Or, it is the same: no matter what is provided as source, User name or User Id?

#4

I think(99%) their private API doesn’t need any conversion.

#5

UserIDs are guaranted to be unique, however in some unofficial API endpoints only the username is available

#6

user id is better primary key because it can’t be changed. Username can be modified by user and that was the source of some minor issues of my own F/UF program (I track everything my program does in the database to run analytics on). When people change username since my program was not aware, it treats the new username and old username as 2 separate accounts. I have recently switched to use user id to avoid those minor issues.

#7

It doesn’t matter what to use, but it’s always easier to work with usernames because you can do whatever you want with it

#8

when scraping user ids, how to convert them to usernames (as JV follow/like source tool does not allow adding user ids, right?)?

#9

userid back to username is not something legit, but there is one API that done it.

#10

what api? 13 chars