#tmeetup BirdHackers API 101

About Me
My Name is Joel Strellner
I go by @jstrellner on Twitter
I’ve been developing things using the Twitter API’s since March, 2008.
Twitturly ( http://twitturly.com )
inView ( http://myinview.com )

What is an API?
An API is a way for any service to allow
any other service to programmatically
access and interact with that services data.

What API’s does Twitter offer?
Twitter currently offers 3 API’s:
REST API
REST Search API (previously Summize)
Streaming API
Depreciated API’s
Data Mining Feed
XMPP Feed

REST API
The REST API is the primary API.
Used for:
Authentication
OAuth
Basic Auth (depreciated, use OAuth)
Posting Tweets
Getting your timeline (Tweets from those you follow)
Getting your Mentions

Search API
Supports all of the same advanced search options that you can do on search.twitter.com
Get trending topics by day, week or current
Allows you to consume it in atom and json formats
Supports fuzzy geolocation filtering
Uses *different* user ID’s than the REST API
Will be eventually the same (V2 of the API’s)

Streaming API
Methods for the Public Stream:
Firehose (Not available to most)
Gardenhose (large portion of Firehose)
Spritzer (small portion of the Firehose)
Following Specific Users/Terms
Birddog / Shadow / Follow
must start with @user or have “in_reply_to” for that user
Allows you to follow 200k, 50k or 200 users, respectively
Track
Allows you to get any tweet matching a keyword
Does not support phrases

What’s being built?
Seesmic Desktop ( http://seesmic.com/ )
Uses the REST API
Uses the Search API
Twitalizer ( http://twitalyzer.com )
Uses the Search API (might use the REST API too)
inView ( http://myinview.com )
Uses the streaming API
Your App?

What’s Coming Next?
Geolocation data in each Tweet
Retweeting (formally)

How do you actually talk to the API?
PHP (getting a users timeline):
<?php
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, ‘http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/jstrellner.xml’);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Twitturly / v0.6');
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS, 10);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, 0);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_NOSIGNAL, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 30);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 60);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $username . ':' . $password);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close ($ch);
?>
$result now has your response.

( XML Response )

How to send a tweet (Basic Auth)
PHP:
<?php
$msg = ‘this is an example tweet.’;
$curl_handle = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, "http:twitter.com/statuses/update.json");
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 30);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=" . urlencode($msg));
curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$twitter_username:$twitter_password");
$buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
curl_close($curl_handle);
?>
$buffer now has your response.

Q&A
Any questions, or comments?
Feel free to tweet your question using the #tmeetuphashtag.

Resources
Twitter API Documentation
http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-API-Documentation
Twitter Streaming API Documentation
http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Streaming-API-Documentation
Ask any API Question
http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk

#tmeetup BirdHackers API 101

by jstrellner on Aug 26, 2009

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#tmeetup BirdHackers API 101 — Presentation Transcript