Twitter API

[scoobs]

Dont no if you are aware Steve or if it even affects cumulus.

On June 30, 2010, the @twitterapi team will be shutting off basic authentication on the Twitter API. All applications, by this date, need to switch to using OAuth

On another note has anyone thought of doing a facebook app for cumulus?

[steve]

I wasn't aware of that, thanks. I had a quick look at the new authentication method (OAuth) and it looks a complete pain. I'm not even sure I'll be able to implement it in Cumulus at all, and probably not before the end of June even if I can.

[dhrandy]

I hope this does get implemented in the future. It is a feature I like. Hopefully you'll figure it out Steve.

[steve]

I've taken the first step, which is to register Cumulus as a Twitter application (except that the name "Cumulus" was already taken, so it's called "Cumulus Weather"). The next step is to apply for "xAuth privilege", as that's the most appropriate way for Cumulus to handle OAuth. Then I have to add support for SSL to Cumulus, as xAuth requires secure "https" connections rather than "http". I'm not sure at the moment how I do that. And then write the new code to handle the authentication process...

And I only added Twitter support in the first place because it was dead easy

[scoobs]

Hope you can sort it Steve, Must admit i have only used the Twitter side for a few months but works well and even updates facebook too (using FB app)

Did mean to post link on first post but got side tracked so here it is for anyone else to have a look.

http://dev.twitter.com/announcements

[stevew]

There are going to be lots of applications caught by this change, its a bloody nuisance!

[steve]

There are going to be lots of applications caught by this change, its a bloody nuisance!

I suppose I should have being paying attention - it's been on the cards for some time, but as far as I can tell, they don't have a mailing list or similar, you have to actively go and read the announcements.

I haven't had a response to my request for xAuth yet, until I do there's not much I can do - the other methods aren't really suitable for Cumulus.

[stevew]

yes xAuth seems to be the way to go for desktop apps (no call back), I suspect they are dealing with a lot of requests and support and it will be a while before (if) you hear back. I was planning on taking a look at using oAuth via PHP (or something similar) on th web site and having a cron job do the timed posting. I think a realtime.txt variant could be sent from Cumulus to the web site and used as the data source. Hopefully I'll find some time between now and end of June to do so, I hope you get your response back soon Steve, it would be a shame to lose the twitter feed, but it would be a bigger shame to have your time wasted by it when you could be doing other more productive things too.

[garytx]

I'll admit I haven't thought this one all the way through, but...

An option might be to output an RSS feed of the current twitter.txt file created by Cumulus, then using a free service like rss2twitter.com (there are many others, too) to feed the text to Twitter. Many if not most of these services that send RSS feeds to Twitter already use OAuth; rss2twitter.com does.

I'm using this with my "Cumulus Twitter" account (CenTexWX) to scrape National Weather Service RSS for watches/warnings in Texas, and ship those off to my Twitter account, along with automated Tweets of my weather data via Cumulus. I need to do some more filtering of that RSS feed, as I'm generating too many "nuisance" tweets from all around this big state, so that I'm only auto-Tweeting messages for the local area, but the concept works great.

As a side note on Twitter, I've noticely lately that I'm getting tons of "random" followers to this account (far more than I get at my "live" Twitter account, "garytx") that seem to be more or less bots, with random character names, and a fair amount of dropoffs. This feed isn't THAT interesting, particularly for folks in other hemispheres. I think these are bot-like identities looking for accounts that auto-follow those who follow you; if that doesn't happen, perhaps they're dropping out. I've also found an account "impersonating" my CenTexWX one, using my real name, my bio, my location, and even my copyrighted photo as their own avatar or profile image. Twitter's anti-impersonation folks are looking into that.

[stevew]

I've been tinkering a little this afternoon, some research and trial and effort and I think I see how this oAuth works (badly would be my answer).

However, some progress has been made. From some simple scripts available here http://cvs.php.net/viewvc.cgi/pecl/oaut ... threv=MAIN and following registering my own application with Twitter (which for oAuth is online and instant) I manage to authorise my application to tweet to my twitter account

Redwood Weather tweet.png

Note the 'less than 10 seconds ago via Redwood Weather' not the usual 'via API', this indicates the tweet came from a registered Application called, as it happens, 'Redwood Weather'.

I think with a little more time (or a better programmer) this could be easily turned into a viable weather tweeter, but its web site based not desktop based.

I'll gladly update this as I make more progress so anyone who does want to try can do so.

[stevew]

An update.

I have this working fine now, though getting it working wasn't straight forward. You can see the result http://twitter.com/RedwoodWeather

I will try to pull together some notes if anyone is interested in trying it. But basically you will need PHP on your web site and be able to run PHP from a command line too. You will need to register your web site with Twitter as an application. I have an #fb tag in my tweet so that its picked up by Facebook, I will be looking at posting direct to Facebook soon as I suspect it uses a similar authorisation mechanism.

[steve]

I've implemented the new authentication code and uploaded a beta - see Announcements. Could everyone who uses Twitter via Cumulus please try it, so we can get the bugs out before the end of June.

[stevew]

Hi Steve, seems to work fine with just a quick test

Sandaysoft Cumulus Twitter.jpg

Could you add the lat/long coordinates so it posts with the new geotagging available?

[steve]

Could you add the lat/long coordinates so it posts with the new geotagging available?

I noticed that on my trawl through the documentation and thought it might be useful for Cumulus users. It looks straightforward enough - I'll have a go at adding it.

[mmorris1]

Just installed beta 1.9.0 and the new twitter looks like it is working OK.. so far