Twibot¶ ↑

Official URL: github.com/cjohansen/twibot/tree/master Christian Johansen (www.cjohansen.no) Twitter: @cjno

Description¶ ↑

Twibot (pronounced like “Abbot”), is a Ruby microframework for creating Twitter bots, heavily inspired by Sinatra.

Usage¶ ↑

Simple example¶ ↑

require 'twibot'

# Receive messages, and tweet them publicly
#
message do |message, params|
  post_tweet message
end

# Respond to @replies if they come from the right crowd
#
reply :from => [:cjno, :irbno] do |message, params|
  post_reply message, "I agree"
end

# Listen in and log tweets
#
tweet do |message, params|
  MyApp.log_tweet(message)
end

# Search for tweets matching a query.  The available search operators
# are explained here: <http://search.twitter.com/operators>
#
search "twibot" do |message, params|
  # do_something
end

# Search for tweets with a hashtag
#  see: <http://twitter.pbworks.com/Hashtags>
#
# Note: hashtag is just a convenience wrapper
# around search.  It will invoke the search
# before and after filters.
#
hashtag "twibot" do |message, params|
  # do_something
end

# Search for tweets with one of a number of hashtags
#  see: <http://twitter.pbworks.com/Hashtags>
#
# Note: hashtags is just an alias to hashtag
#
hashtags [:twibot, :ruby, "twitter4r"] do |message, params|
  # do_something
end

# Process any new followers.  user_id will be
# the user's Numeric id and params will always
# be an empty Hash.
#
# add_friend!(id) is a convenience wrapper around the
# twitter4r friendship method.  remove_friend!(id)
# is also available.
#
follower do |user_id, params|
  # keep out the riff-raff...
  bot.add_friend!(user_id) unless user_id == 890631
end

# add some set-up code that will be called
# before each polling cycle.  :all is the
# default, so it can safely be omitted
#
before :all do
  MyApp.log("Started polling at #{Time.now}")
end

# the after hook for the polling cycle gets
# passed the number of messages that were
# processed
#
after :all do |message_count|
  MyApp.log("Finished polling at #{Time.now}.  Got #{message_count} messages.")
end

# each action has before and after hooks available:
#  - follower
#  - message
#  - reply
#  - search
#  - tweet
#
# there can be only one before and one after callback
# registered for a given type.  the callback block
# will be called with no arguments.
#
# Note: hashtag and hashtags are just wrappers around
# search and do not have their own hooks.  Use the
# search hooks when using hashtag or hashtags.
#
before :message do
  MyApp.is_processing_a_message = true
end

after :message do
  MyApp.is_processing_a_message = false
end

after :follower do
  MyApp.log("I have another follower!")
end

Running the bot¶ ↑

To run the bot, simply do:

ruby bot.rb

Configuration¶ ↑

Twibot looks for a configuration file in ./config/bot.yml. It should contain atleast:

login: twitter_login
password: twitter_password

You can also pass configuration as command line arguments:

ruby bot.rb --login myaccount

…or configure with Ruby:

configure do |conf|
  conf.login = "my_account"
do

If you don’t specify login and/or password in any of these ways, Twibot will prompt you for those.

If you want to change how Twibot is configured, you can setup the bot instance manually and give it only the configuration options you want:

# Create bot only with default configuration
require 'twibot'
bot = Twibot::Bot.new(Twibot::Config.default)

# Application here...

If you want command line arguments you can do:

require 'twibot'
bot = Twibot::Bot.new(Twibot::Config.default << Twibot::CliConfig.new)

To disable the buffering of the Twibot log file, set the ‘log_flush` config option to `true`:

configure do |conf|
  conf.log_file = File.join(DAEMON_ROOT, 'log', 'twitterd.log')
  conf.log_level = "info"
  conf.log_flush = true
end

“Routes”¶ ↑

Like Sinatra, and other web app frameworks, Twibot supports “routes”: patterns to match incoming tweets and messages:

require 'twibot'

tweet "time :country :city" do |message,params|
  time = MyTimeService.lookup(params[:country], params[:city])
  client.message :post, "Time is #{time} in #{params[:city]}, #{params[:country]}"
end

You can have several “tweet” blocks (or “message” or “reply”). The first one to match an incoming tweet/message will handle it.

As of the upcoming 0.1.5/0.2.0, Twibot also supports regular expressions as routes:

require 'twibot'

tweet /^time ([^\s]*) ([^\s]*)/ do |message, params|
  # params is an array of matches when using regexp routes
  time = MyTimeService.lookup(params[0], params[1])
  client.message :post, "Time is #{time} in #{params[:city]}, #{params[:country]}"
end

Working with the Twitter API¶ ↑

The DSL gives you access to your Twitter client instance through “client” (or “twitter”):

message do
  twitter.status :post, "Hello world" # Also: client.status :post, "Hello world"
end

Requirements¶ ↑

Twitter4r. You’ll need atleast 0.3.1, which is currently only available from GitHub. Versions of Twitter4r prior to 0.3.1 does not allow for the since_id parameter to be appended to URLs to the REST API. Twibot needs these to only fetch fresh messages and tweets.

Installation¶ ↑

gem install twibot

Is it Ruby 1.9?¶ ↑

As of Twibot 0.1.3, yes it is! All tests pass, please give feedback from real world usage if you have trouble.

Polling¶ ↑

Twitter pulled the plug on it’s xmpp service last year. This means that Twibot backed bots needs to poll the Twitter service to keep up. Twitter has a request limit on 70 reqs/hour, so you should configure your bot not to make more than that, else it will fail. You can ask for your bot account to be put on the whitelist which allows you to make 20.000 reqs/hour, and shouldn’t be a problem so long as your intentions are good (I think).

Twibot polls like this:

• Poll messages if any message handlers exist

• Poll tweets if any tweet or reply handlers exist

• Sleep for interval seconds

• Go over again

As long as Twibot finds any messages and/or tweets, the interval stays the same (min_interval configuration switch). If nothing was found however, the interval to sleep is increased by interval_step configuration option. This happens until it reaches max_interval, where it will stay until Twibot finds anything.

Contributors¶ ↑

• Dan Van Derveer (bug fixes) - dan.van.derveer.com/

• Ben Vandgrift (Twitter downtime error handling) - neovore.com/

• Jens Ohlig (warnings)

• Wilco van Duinkerken (bug fixes) - www.sparkboxx.com/

• Bodaniel Jeanes (configure block fix) - bjeanes.github.com/

License¶ ↑

(The MIT License)

Copyright © 2009 Christian Johansen

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the ‘Software’), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.