Notifications using Twitch API - php

Question

I'm currently creating a Twitch notification web app in PHP.
For the moment, the authentication works fine :
Client wants use the app -> redirected on Twitch website to accept asked scopes -> redirected on my app website with a "code" parameter -> "code" sent by curl request -> response containing the accessToken.
I stored accessToken and client username in $_COOKIE and $_SESSION variable (set $_COOKIE doesn't work on all web browsers).
After that I have to check (in real-time ?) if the user has new followers. Certains web applications, as TNotifier, exists and do this very well... But I don't know how.
In the Twitch API, we have only for the follows request the possibility to list all of these followers. I thought directly i will have to make requests, again and again (with one second of delay), and compare the new request with the last one... But i think there 's an other way to make that ?
Here is the follows request :
curl -H 'Accept: application/vnd.twitchtv.v2+json' \
-X GET https://api.twitch.tv/kraken/channels/test_user1/follows
And the JSON response :
{
"_links": {
"next": "https://api.twitch.tv/kraken/channels/test_user1/follows?limit=25&offset=25",
"self": "https://api.twitch.tv/kraken/channels/test_user1/follows?limit=25&offset=0"
},
"follows": [
{
"_links": {
"self": "https://api.twitch.tv/kraken/users/test_user2/follows/channels/test_user1"
},
"user": {
"_links": {
"self": "https://api.twitch.tv/kraken/users/test_user2"
},
"staff": false,
"logo": null,
"display_name": "test_user2",
"created_at": "2013-02-06T21:21:57Z",
"updated_at": "2013-02-13T20:59:42Z",
"_id": 40091581,
"name": "test_user2"
}
},
...
]
}
Here is my code, but still thinking a better way exists...
$uknown=""; //to initialize my loop function.
comparaison($uknown);
function comparaison($u){
$options = array(
'http' => array(
'header' => 'Accept: application/vnd.twitchtv.v2+json',
'method' => 'GET',
)
);
$context = stream_context_create($options);
$result = file_get_contents('https://api.twitch.tv/kraken/channels/test_user1/follows', false, $context);
$decode_result = json_decode($result, true);
$follow=$decode_result['follows'][0];
$user=$follow['user'];
$last_follower=$user['display_name'];
if($last_follower != $u){
haveANewFollower($last_follower);
}
comparaison($last_follower);
}
Is it possible TNotifier use another way to check new followers ?

Answer 1

It's the only way, as there's no push way to do followers, so you have to rely on pulling. For subscribers there would be the possibility to listen for chat messages for new subscribers, but as this does not work for followers, you can only rely on the pull method using the kraken api.