export_comments.bml

[forever_old]

I have few questions about export_comments.bml.

1. Metadata should be cached but can be modified. Should I perform full update of metadata periodically? Does that mean that I shouldn't do this too often?
   
2. The pseudocode for get=comment_body says: "if nothing was returned". What does "nothing" actually mean? XML with only maxid?
   
3. "startid+1000 < maxid

Comments

[pne]

Should I run download_comments with the same startid (i.e. repeat the same request)?

No, with startid+1000.

Where 1000 comes from?

Maximum number of comments returned at once, if I recall correctly.

So each time you call it, you get a chunk of 1000 comments starting at startid.

So if there are, say, 4321 comments available, you'd call it five times: with startid=0, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000 (and get 1000, 1000, 1000, 1000, 321 comments in response).

[forever_old]

Thanks!

So AFAIU if I have 4321 comments. And first 1000 comments are deleted my first response (startid=0) will be empty.

("if nothing was returned, and startid+1000 < maxid from metadata, call download_comments again")