jokame / ntwitter

Asynchronous Twitter REST/stream/search client API for node.js

Asynchronous Twitter client API for node.js

ntwitter is an improved version of jdub's node-twitter, which in turn was inspired by, and uses some code from, technoweenie's twitter-node.

Installation

You can install ntwitter and its dependencies with npm: npm install ntwitter.

Getting started

This library is, for the most part, the same API as node-twitter. Much of the documentation below is straight from node-twitter - credit goes to jdub for putting all this together in the first place.

The most significant API change involves error handling in callbacks. Callbacks now receive the error as a separate parameter, rather than as part of the data. This is consistent with node's standard library. Callbacks should now look something like this:

function (err, result) {
  if (err) return callback(err);

  // Do something with 'result' here
}

Where callback is the parent function's callback. (Or any other function you want to call on error.)

Setup API

The keys listed below can be obtained from dev.twitter.com after setting up a new App.

var twitter = require('ntwitter');

var twit = new twitter({
  consumer_key: 'Twitter',
  consumer_secret: 'API',
  access_token_key: 'keys',
  access_token_secret: 'go here'
});

REST API

Interaction with other parts of Twitter is accomplished through their RESTful API. The best documentation for this exists at dev.twitter.com. Convenience methods exist for many of the available methods, but some may be more up-to-date than others. If your Twitter interaction is very important, double-check the parameters in the code with Twitter's current documentation.

Note that all functions may be chained:

twit
  .verifyCredentials(function (err, data) {
    console.log(data);
  })
  .updateStatus('Test tweet from ntwitter/' + twitter.VERSION,
    function (err, data) {
      console.log(data);
    }
  );

Search API

twit.search('nodejs OR #node', {}, function(err, data) {
  console.log(data);
});

Streaming API

The stream() callback receives a Stream-like EventEmitter.

Here is an example of how to call the statuses/sample method:

twit.stream('statuses/sample', function(stream) {
  stream.on('data', function (data) {
    console.log(data);
  });
});

Here is an example of how to call the 'statuses/filter' method with a bounding box over San Fransisco and New York City ( see streaming api for more details on locations ):

twit.stream('statuses/filter', {'locations':'-122.75,36.8,-121.75,37.8,-74,40,-73,41'}, function(stream) {
  stream.on('data', function (data) {
    console.log(data);
  });
});

ntwitter also supports user and site streams:

twit.stream('user', {track:'nodejs'}, function(stream) {
  stream.on('data', function (data) {
    console.log(data);
  });
  stream.on('end', function (response) {
    // Handle a disconnection
  });
  stream.on('destroy', function (response) {
    // Handle a 'silent' disconnection from Twitter, no end/error event fired
  });
  // Disconnect stream after five seconds
  setTimeout(stream.destroy, 5000);
});

Contributors

Lots of people contribute to this project. You should too!

TODO

• Complete the convenience functions, preferably generated
• Support recommended reconnection behaviour for the streaming APIs