Category: twitter

This brief code example checks to see whether user_to_check (a Twitter username as a String) is following the Twitter account twitter_username. The boolean is_user_following will be true if there is a follow.

The twitter object represents a twitter4j.Twitter class preconfigured with authentication details.

Relationship to_other_user = twitter.showFriendship(twitter_username, user_to_check);
boolean is_user_following = to_other_user.isTargetFollowingSource();

Here’s a demonstration of how to use the twitter4j library to post a tweet and set a location from where it was posted.

This example requires a twitter4j.twitter object (the twitter variable) to be preconfigured with authentication tokens. Replace the text Orlando, FL with a string describing the user’s location, and the GPS coordinates with your user’s coordinates.

    StatusUpdate status = new StatusUpdate(tweet_text);
    /**
     * We'll add location information for this tweet. 
     * Here, we tell Twitter that this tweet was made from Orlando, FL.
     * The GPS coordinates here are for Walt Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park.
     */
    status.placeId("Orlando, FL");
    GeoLocation geolocate = new GeoLocation(28.355269, -81.559390);
    status.setLocation(geolocate);
    status.setDisplayCoordinates(true);
    //And finally, post this tweet.
    try {
        twitter.updateStatus(status);
    }
    catch (TwitterException e) {
        System.err.println("Problem accessing Twitter. Exception message: " + e.getMessage());
    }

Remember the appropriate import:

import twitter4j.*;

Earlier I posted examples of how to log into Twitter and post a tweet using the twitter4j library. Now here’s a function demonstrating how to retweet a post.

This function is entirely self-contained; all it requires is a global variable twitter, which represents a twitter4j.Twitter object preconfigured with the proper authentication details.

public void doRetweet() {
    /**
     * To demonstrate retweeting, we'll search Twitter for all tweets that contain 
     * the phrase "mail not working" (including quotation marks). We'll then select 
     * a random tweet, and retweet it into our stream.
     */
    try {
        //Search for tweets, then pull out a list of those tweets.
        //A Status is how twitter4j refers to an individual tweet.
        twitter4j.Query q = new twitter4j.Query("\"mail not working\"");
        q.count(100);
        List<Status> results = twitter.search(q).getTweets();
        //Randomly select a tweet
        Random generator = new Random();
        int pick = generator.nextInt(results.size());
        Status status_to_retweet = results.get(pick);
        //Log the tweet we're retweeting
        System.out.println("Now retweeting: " + status_to_retweet.toString());
        //And finally retweet that tweet
        long status_id = status_to_retweet.getId();
        twitter.retweetStatus(status_id);
    }
    catch (TwitterException e) {
        System.err.println("A TwitterException has occurred while attempting to retweet. Exception message: " + e.getMessage());
    }
}//end function

Many web applications integrate Twitter into their pages to display realtime news and thoughts. Here’s a code snippet showing how to search Twitter using the twitter4j library.

Twitter’s search API doesn’t return all search results at once; instead it returns “pages” of results, with each page containing 100 tweets matching the search criteria. The following code snippet runs through many pages of search results using a while loop, so it may take some time to process. Run it within a backend if you’re searching for a particularly popular phrase or doing heavy processing on each tweet.

The variable twitter represents a twitter4j.Twitter object, and status represents a single tweet. You can extract tweet information from that object; for example status.getText() would return the text of the tweet. Edit the string “google app engine” to whatever text you’re searching Twitter for.

twitter4j.Query twitter_query = new twitter4j.Query("google app engine");
twitter_query.setCount(100);
//This while loop runs through each page of the returned 
//tweets. One page of results (100 tweets) is processed 
//per loop.
while (twitter_query != null) {
    //A list of the returned tweets, representing 1 page (100 tweets).
    QueryResult twitter_results = twitter.search(twitter_query);
    //Run through this page of results and access each returned tweet.
    for (Status status : twitter_results.getTweets()) {
        //Do something with the status object.
    }
    //Retrieves a Query representing the next page of results.
    twitter_query = twitter_results.nextQuery();
}//end while loop running through pages of returned results.

Many web applications need to connect to and integrate with Twitter. In Java, the best and most widely-used library is twitter4j. The following code snippet shows how to connect to Twitter and post a tweet.

Oauth_consumer_key, oauth_consumer_secret, oauth_access_token, and oauth_access_token_secret are the Twitter OAuth authentication keys. You can generate those keys by going to Twitter’s developer site and creating an application plus access tokens. The string tweet_text is the text to post to Twitter. If any problems occur while posting to Twitter, a TwitterException will be thrown.

ConfigurationBuilder config = new ConfigurationBuilder();
config.setDebugEnabled(true);
config.setOAuthConsumerKey(oauth_consumer_key);
config.setOAuthConsumerSecret(oauth_consumer_secret);
config.setOAuthAccessToken(oauth_access_token);
config.setOAuthAccessTokenSecret(oauth_access_token_secret);
Twitter twitter = (new TwitterFactory(config.build())).getInstance();
try {
    //Post to Twitter.
    twitter.updateStatus(tweet_text);
}
catch (TwitterException e) {
    //error posting to Twitter
}