Sync watched endpoint advice needed

[michaldrabik]

Hi Trakt team,
I'm wondering what is the better way to use this endpoint from your point of view.
We are talking about: https://api.trakt.tv/sync/watched/shows

The case is initializing user's collection in the app so basically one-time import Trakt.tv account progress and shows data.
Lets assume this user has been using Trakt for a long time and has a big collection 500-1000 shows.

Should I call the endpoint single time with ?extended=full which might take a very long time and possibly result in a timeout.
Or should I call it without it and then fetch all the show details needed using show details endpoint sequentially repeated 500-1000 times?

Thanks,
Mike

[VaslD]

From a "best programming practice" point of view you shouldn't cache data that you don't know when you'll need. Which means you should first use non-extended API to pull the full watch history, and only retrieve show details when user specifically navigates to a page or otherwise performs an action that requires say Overview and Genres. I doubt the user would be somewhat a maniac and open detail pages on their 1,000 watched shows. Even if they do so, calling the API 1,000 times in a span of about half an hour (assuming they're on super-fast Internet and get done reading every show detail in 2 seconds) is better than calling 1,000 APIs concurrently or call an extended API with 1,000 items.