Using the REST Twitter API in our web-application (Wk 12)

Due to the technical limitations of the Twitter API not allowing us to get tweets from every users from a single day, it was decided to use the alternative method of getting the tweets of a single user, sorting these by date, and repeating this process for several other users (specifically users tweeting about things that happened on a specific date) to compile a set of tweets that still relate to our web application's purpose.

 The single-user tweets method relies on the utilisation of a TwitterOAuth library and the example I followed along used a user named a library by user 'Abraham' (accessed and downloaded from GitHub). I first retrieved my Twitter API key and secret from the developers page which were used to identify the specific application. These were defined as variables in index.php:

Next, connection was established using these newly created variables using the Abraham Twitter library. Following this a call is made to get the tweets from a specified user and then display them:

As we can see there are many arguments that are able to be specified when getting a specific users tweets. In this case the user we are retrieving Tweets from is has the screen name (screen_name) 'snowden'. It can also be noted that we are getting a count of 200 tweets, with no replies or retweets (exclude_replies => true, include_rts => false). 

 It was actually a surprisingly straight forward process to get a stream of Tweets up and running for a specific user - I initially had thought that the changes to the Twitter API had made it rather difficult to do this. The easiness of this process has given our team a suitable alternative to the current Twitter column without having to change it to a news column or something different completely.

 EDIT: In the end the team unanimously decided to revert to the original Twitter column which showed trend data for the current date only. It is believed that these global trends suit the website's purpose more than a single users' tweets. Reflecting on this I can definitely see the importance of having more than several users information featured on the Twitter column as the three columns are all about the juxtaposition of past history and current history social media - just a few users cannot effectively summarise/account for an entire generation.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Workshop portfolio design process (Wk 11)

Image
This week's workshop session was all about planning and preparing to develop our portfolio. A summary of the process I completed and notes I took during the session can be seen below: PHASE 1: Browsing portfolio's for inspiration Below I have included a list of design elements that I liked and could potentially use in my portfolio: Image navigation links: on hover the name of the link shows up and the image darkens -  Sagmeister & Walsh 's portfolio Single page scroll portfolio with links to jump down -  Melanie Daveid 's portfolio Header only shows up once scrolling down the page begins -  Studio Schurk 's site Simple animations on hover -  Mark Thomas 's portfolio Header that automatically changes as the page scrolls -  Jesse Willmon 's portfolio PHASE 2: Initial brainstorming The following have been constructed with a single page scroll type portfolio in mind. Site map Potential design layout Colour scheme I really like how b...
Read more

My course aims and expectations (Wk 1)

With the first week of classes over, I have begun to develop some expectations of what the design computing course will be like, and I have several aims to help me keep track of myself throughout the semester: Based on what I know of this course so far, I expect to be applying the design and web coding skills I have learnt in the previous web design course (DECO1400) in new and practical ways. By doing this I hope to not only further my skills in these areas, but to also produce a suitable web application for the major project that fits the given brief.  I want to be heavily involved with the design planning phase of the project as this is what I believe I'm best at; accounting for numerous different design factors and then visually conveying this to the team. In regards to the major project, I am specifically worried about my ability to use and manipulate JavaScript code, as this was what I struggled with most last semester. I scraped through web design largely due to a bett...
Read more

Portfolio content ideas (Wk 9)

With the due date for the portfolio assignment approaching, I thought it would be relevant to consider the actual content that I could put on my website. I have done only a few limited projects at university so far so I feel that it is very important to look at exterior projects that I have completed that could go onto the portfolio to show readers more of myself and to give the portfolio a more wholesome appearance. Career-related work This section will be all about the assignments I have completed that I feel could be shown to a company to advertise myself and my skills: High school projects - mainly assignments from my Graphics subject which highlight my advanced understanding of CAD software. University projects - assignments that show my understanding of design principles in general and for web design. Personal projects This section will be all about personal projects I have completed that whilst might not be directly relevant to a company, give insight about my person...
Read more