1. Twitter API
Keys for creating an awesome application !

2. Pascal Alberty
@zorrobiwan
CTO
Managing Partner

3. Twitter Dev Ecosystem
● Twitter success
○ Thanks Dev Community !
● API
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September 2006
Very complete
Open
Free
https://blog.twitter.com/2006/introducing-twitter-api

4. The APIs
● APIs
○ Search API
○ REST API
○ Streaming API
○ https://dev.twitter.com/docs/history-rest-search-api
● Versions
○ API version 1 (almost deprecated)
○ API version 1.1

5. Resources
https://dev.twitter.com/
(Drupal
)

6. Authentication
● OAuth
○ Each API request must be authorized
○ Access token on behalf of a Twitter user
● Obtaining access token
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Sign in with Twitter
3-legged OAuth
Pin based OAuth
dev.twitter.com
...
https://twitter.com/settings/applications

7. Declare your application
https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new

8. Rate limiting
● Rate limit window duration
○ 15 minutes
● Requests allotted
○ per user
○ via application-only auth
● Example
○ GET statuses/user_timeline
○ per user: 150 requests per 15 minutes
○ via app: 300 requests per 15 minutes
https://dev.twitter.com/docs/rate-limiting/1.1/limits

9. Other technical limits
● Direct messages
○ 250 per day
● Tweets
○ 1,000 per day
○ Retweets are counted as Tweets.
● Changes to account email
○ Four per hour
● Following
○ 1,000 per day
● Following (account-based)
○ up to following 2,000 other users

10. Platform objects
● Tweets can be found alone, within user objects, but
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most often within timelines
Users can be found tweeting, following, and
favoriting on Twitter
Entities are most often found within Tweets
Places can be found throughout the natural universe,
but typically only appear attached to Tweets on Twitter

11. Objects type
● JSON !
● XML output will be dropped soon
○ Only JSON output with API 1.1
● Be careful with ids (64 bits)
○ use String version (especially if using Javascript)
○ Twitpocalypse
■ https://dev.twitter.com/docs/twitter-ids-json-and-snowflake
○ Idpocalypse
■ https://dev.twitter.com/blog/64-bit-twitter-user-idpocalypse

12. Tweet Example
https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/show.json?id=341545927401680897&include_entities=true

13. User example
https://api.twitter.com/1/users/show.json?screen_name=zorrobiwan&include_entities=true

14. Entities / Entity Example
● Hashtags, Medias, URLs, User mentions,
Symbols
● No need to parse
● Data used for display also (ex: display_url)

15. Place example
https://api.twitter.com/1/geo/id/247f43d441defc03.json

16. Libraries
● PHP
○ Twitter-async (https://github.com/jmathai/twitterasync)
○ tmhOAuth (https://github.
com/themattharris/tmhOAuth)
○ Zend Framework (http://framework.zend.
com/manual/1.12/en/zend.service.twitter.html)
● Java
○ Twitter4J (http://twitter4j.org/)
https://dev.twitter.com/docs/twitter-libraries

17. Tools
● Twurl
○ https://github.com/marcel/twurl
○ "curl" for Twitter API
○ Manage access tokens (authentication)
● Apigee Console
○ https://apigee.com/console
○ Free console to execute APIs

18. Search API
● Similar to http://search.twitter.com
● Criteria
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terms
geocode
language ("Language detection is best-effort")
count, until, since-id, max-id
result type: mixed, recent, popular
include entities
● Paginated !
○ you have to manage this by yourself

19. REST API
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Timelines
Tweets
Direct Messages
Friends & Followers
Users
Suggested Users
Favorites
Lists
Saved Searches
Places & Geo
Trends
Spam Reporting
OAuth
Help

20. Streaming API
● Persistent HTTP connection
○ until you decide to close it
● Could be reeeeaaaaaaally huge !
○ Think about you architecture (hard and soft) !
○ Separate storage and consumption
● Only one stream opened at a time
● Could be tricky to managed
○ Use a library

21. Streaming API endpoints groups
● Public Streams
○ GET statuses/sample
○ POST statuses/filter
○ GET statuses/firehose (limited access)
● User Streams
○ Data and events for a specific user
● Site Streams (beta and limited access)
○ Real time update for large number of users

22. https://twitter.com/zorrobiwan/status/341888609399480323
Twitter API
Keys for creating an awesome application !