Net::Twitter Cookbook: How I tweet, plus

Previously, I wrote a post showing the basics on how to send a tweet using Perl and Net::Twitter. I showed the easiest you can do it.

Below is the code that I use most often. It is a command-line tool, where it's used something along the lines of named_twitter.pl jacobydave text of my tweet. Except, that's not how I type it, thanks to my .alias file. I have twitter aliased to '~/bin/named_twitter jacobydave ' and normally tweet like twitter this is how I tweet.

	#!/usr/bin/env perl
	# largely taken verbatim from
	# http://search.cpan.org/dist/Net-Twitter/lib/Net/Twitter/Role/OAuth.pm
	# Next step is to get the keys and secrets to a config.
	use feature qw{ say } ;
	use strict ;
	use Carp ;
	use Data::Dumper ;
	use Encode 'decode' ;
	use IO::Interactive qw{ interactive } ;
	use Net::Twitter ;
	use WWW::Shorten 'TinyURL' ;
	use YAML::XS qw{ DumpFile LoadFile } ;
	use utf8 ;
	binmode STDOUT, ':utf8' ;
	# next step, add Getopt::Long into the mix
	my $config_file = $ENV{ HOME } . '/.twitter.cnf' ;
	my $config = LoadFile( $config_file ) ;
	my ( $user, @status ) = map { decode('UTF-8', $_) } @ARGV ;
	@status = map {
	my $s = $_ ;
	if ( $s =~ m{^https?://}i ) {
	$s = makeashorterlink( $s ) ;
	}
	$s ;
	} @status ;
	my $status = join ' ', @status ;
	if ( length $status < 1 ) {
	$status = <STDIN> ;
	my @status = split /\s/, $status ;
	$user = shift @status ;
	@status = map {
	my $s = $_ ;
	if ( $s =~ m{^http://}i ) {
	$s = makeashorterlink( $s ) ;
	}
	$s ;
	} @status ;
	$status = join ' ', @status ;
	}
	if ( length $status > 140 ) {
	say { interactive } 'Too long' ;
	say { interactive } length $status ;
	say { interactive } $status ;
	exit ;
	}
	if ( length $status < 1 ) {
	say { interactive } 'No content' ;
	say { interactive } length $status ;
	say { interactive } $status ;
	exit ;
	}
	# GET key and secret from http://twitter.com/apps
	my $twit = Net::Twitter->new(
	traits => [qw/API::RESTv1_1/],
	consumer_key => $config->{ consumer_key },
	consumer_secret => $config->{ consumer_secret },
	ssl => 1 ,
	) ;
	# You'll save the token and secret in cookie, config file or session database
	my ( $access_token, $access_token_secret ) ;
	( $access_token, $access_token_secret ) = restore_tokens( $user ) ;
	if ( $access_token && $access_token_secret ) {
	$twit->access_token( $access_token ) ;
	$twit->access_token_secret( $access_token_secret ) ;
	}
	unless ( $twit->authorized ) {
	# You have no auth token
	# go to the auth website.
	# they'll ask you if you wanna do this, then give you a PIN
	# input it here and it'll register you.
	# then save your token vals.
	say "Authorize this app at ", $twit->get_authorization_url,
	' and enter the PIN#' ;
	my $pin = <STDIN> ; # wait for input
	chomp $pin ;
	my ( $access_token, $access_token_secret, $user_id, $screen_name ) =
	$twit->request_access_token( verifier => $pin ) ;
	save_tokens( $user, $access_token, $access_token_secret ) ;
	}
	if ( $twit->update( $status ) ) {
	say { interactive } $status ;
	}
	else {
	say { interactive } 'FAIL' ;
	}
	#========= ========= ========= ========= ========= ========= =========
	sub restore_tokens {
	my ( $user ) = @_ ;
	my ( $access_token, $access_token_secret ) ;
	if ( $config->{ tokens }{ $user } ) {
	$access_token = $config->{ tokens }{ $user }{ access_token } ;
	$access_token_secret =
	$config->{ tokens }{ $user }{ access_token_secret } ;
	}
	return $access_token, $access_token_secret ;
	}
	sub save_tokens {
	my ( $user, $access_token, $access_token_secret ) = @_ ;
	$config->{ tokens }{ $user }{ access_token } = $access_token ;
	$config->{ tokens }{ $user }{ access_token_secret } = $access_token_secret ;
	DumpFile( $config_file, $config ) ;
	return 1 ;
	}
	__DATA__
	This program uses a YAML file to hold the configuration data, and
	it looks like this
	---
	consumer_key: ckckckckckckckckckckck
	consumer_secret: cscscscscscscscscscscscscscscscscscscscs
	tokens:
	your_screen_name:
	access_token: 1111111111-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
	access_token_secret: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

view raw named_twitter.pl hosted with ❤ by GitHub

This isn't to say I never automate tweets; I certainly do. But it is a rare part of what I do with the Twitter API and Net::Twitter. I will dive deeper into issues with tweeting and direct messages, both in a technical and social matter, in a later post.

But I said that you have the consumer key and secret, which identify you as a service, and the access token and secret, which identify you as a user of the service. In the above code sample, I use YAML to store this data, but you could use JSON, Sqlite or anything else to store it. Among other benefits, you can put your code into GitHub, as I did above, without exposing anything.

As I proceed, I will assume that tokens are handled somehow and proceed directly to the cool part.

Again, you get the consumer key by going to apps.twitter.com and creating a new app.

You log into apps.twitter.com with your Twitter account, click "Create New App" and fill in the details. When I created my three, you had to specifically choose "can send DMs" specifically, so if you're creating apps to follow along, I do suggest you allow yourself that option.