NAME
AnyEvent::Twitter - Implementation of the Twitter API for AnyEvent
VERSION
Version 0.21
SYNOPSIS
use AnyEvent::Twitter;
my $twitty =
AnyEvent::Twitter->new (
username => 'elm3x',
password => 'secret123'
);
$twitty->reg_cb (
error => sub {
my ($twitty, $error) = @_;
warn "Error: $error\n";
},
statuses_friends => sub {
my ($twitty, @statuses) = @_;
for (@statuses) {
my ($pp_status, $raw_status) = @$_;
printf "new friend status: %s: %s\n",
$pp_status->{screen_name},
$pp_status->{text};
}
},
);
$twitty->receive_statuses_friends;
$twitty->update_status ("I'm bathing in my hot tub!", sub {
my ($twitty, $status, $js_status, $error) = @_;
if (defined $error) {
# ...
} else {
# ...
}
});
$twitty->start; # important!
DESCRIPTION
This is a lightweight implementation of the Twitter API. It's currently
still very limited and only implements the most necessary parts of the
API (for inclusion in my chat client).
If you are missing something don't hesitate to bug me!
This module uses AnyEvent::HTTP for communicating with twitter. It
currently doesn't use OAuth based authentication but HTTP Basic
Authentication, as it is still not deprecated at the time of this
writing (July 2009). If it will ever be deprecated I will take care to
implement OAuth.
The AnyEvent::Twitter class inherits the event callback interface from
Object::Event.
WEIGHTS AND RATE LIMITING
As the Twitter API is heavily rate limited in that kind of way that you
only have a few GET requests per hour (~150), this module implements
rate limiting. It will dynamically adjust the poll intervals (if you
didn't set a fixed poll intervall) to not exceed the requests per hours.
The "bandwidth" parameter to the "new" method (see below) controls how
much of the available requests are used. This is useful if you want to
run multiple clients for one twitter account and not have them take away
each others request per hours.
The $weigth parameters to the "receive_..." methods is for prioritizing
the requests. It works as follows: Each time a request can be made every
"receive_..." 'job' gets his weight added to an internal counter. The
'job' with the highest count will be executed.
With this simple weight system you can say which kind of information you
are most interested in. For example giving the statuses of your friends
a $weight of 2 and the mentions of your nickname a $weight of 1 will
result in polling the statuses of your friends two times more often.
LOCAL TIME
NOTE: It's crucial that your system clock is correctly set. As twitter
only reports an absolute time at which the rate limiting is reseted we
have to calculate the next poll time based on your clock.
METHODS
my $obj = AnyEvent::Twitter->new (%args)
Creates a new twitter client object. %args can contain these
arguments ("username" and "password" are mandatory):
username => $username
Your twitter username.
password => $password
Your twitter password.
state => $new_state_struct
Initializer for the value given to the "state" method (see
below).
bandwidth => $bandwidth_factor
$bandwidth_factor is the amount of "bandwidth" that is consumed
by the regular polling. The default value is 0.95. Any value
between 0 and 1 is valid.
If you give a value of 0.5 this AnyEvent::Twitter instance will
only use up half of the available requests per hours for the
polls.
$obj->start
This method will start requesting the data you are interested in.
See also the "receive_..." methods, about how to say what you are
interested in.
$obj->receive_statuses_friends ($count, [$weight])
This will enable polling for the statuses of your friends.
$count is the amount of backlog the requests will get (see Twitter
API for the maximum values). If it is undefined no count will be set
for the request.
About $weight see the "WEIGHTS AND RATE LIMITING" section.
Whenever a new status is received the "statuses_friends" event is
emitted (see below).
The "id" of the seen statuses are recorded in a data structure which
you may set or retrieve via the "state" method. I recommend caching
the state data structure.
$obj->check_status_length ($status)
This method checks whether the string in $status does not exceed the
maximum length of a status update.
If the length is ok a true value is returned. If not, a false value
is returned.
$obj->update_status ($status, $done_cb->($obj, $status, $js, $error))
This will post an update of your status to twitter. $status should
not be longer than 140 octets, you can check this with the
"check_status_length" method (see above).
When the request is done the $done_cb callback will be called with
the $status as second argument if the update was successful and a
human readable $error string as fourth argument in case of an error.
$js is the JSON response received from the server.
When the HTTP POST was successful the "status_updated" event will be
emitted.
my $state_struct = $obj->state
$obj->state ($new_state_struct)
With these methods you can set the internal sequence state. Whenever
a special kind of data is retrieved from Twitter the most recent
sequence id of the entry is remembered in the hash $state_struct.
You can use this method to store the state or restore it. This is
useful if you have an application that shouldn't forget which
entries it already saw.
EVENTS
statuses_<statuspath> => @statuses
This event is emitted whenever a new status was seen for the
"statuspath" which can be one of these:
friends
public (currently unimplemented)
user (currently unimplemented)
mentions (currently unimplemented)
@statuses contains the new status updates. Each element of @statuses
is an array reference containing:
$status, $raw_status
$status is a hash reference containing some post processed
information about the status update in $raw_status. Most notable is
the unescaping of the texts (see below about $raw_status).
It contains these key/value pairs:
text => $text
This is the text of the status update.
screen_name => $screen_name
This contains the screen name of the user who posted this status
update.
$raw_status is the parsed JSON structure of the new status. About
the interesting fields please consult
Please note that '<' and '>' are encoded as HTML entities '<' and
'>', so you will have to decode them yourself.
next_request_in => $seconds, $remaining_request, $remaining_time
This event is emitted when the timer for the next request is
started. $seconds are the seconds until the next request is made.
$remaining_request are the requests you have available within the
next $remaining_time seconds.
error => $error_string
Whenever an error happens this event is emitted. $error_string
contains a human readable error message.
AUTHOR
Robin Redeker, "<elmex@ta-sa.org>"
SEE ALSO
Object::Event
BUGS
Please report any bugs or feature requests to "bug-anyevent-twitter at
rt.cpan.org", or through the web interface at
will be notified and then you'll automatically be notified of progress
on your bug as I make changes.
SUPPORT
You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.
perldoc AnyEvent::Twitter
You can also look for information at:
* IRC: AnyEvent::Twitter IRC Channel
See the same channel as the AnyEvent::XMPP module:
Server : chat.freenode.net
Channel : #ae_xmpp
Feel free to join and ask questions!
* AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation
* CPAN Ratings
* RT: CPAN's request tracker
* Search CPAN
COPYRIGHT & LICENSE
Copyright 2009 Robin Redeker, all rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.