This was my first attempt making twitter bots. I made a very simple twitter bot for this blog, check the Source and also follow @_hakasebot.

Setting Up

The bot was created using the Twit package, which is a Twitter API client for Node.js. Twit needs to connect with my twitter account so first I created a new Twitter Application. After that, I took note of my application’s keys: * Consumer Key * Consumer Secret * Access Token * Access Token Secret

You can find these keys on the Keys and Access Tokens panel in you app’s dashboard.

Once these keys are all ready, we create a new Node.js project and initialise the Twit package. > Prerequisites: Node.js, npm, and of course a PC

So you can create a directory and create three files package.json, config.js, and bot.js

In the config.js file, we setup Twit.

//config.js
const Twit = require('twit');
const TH = new Twit({ // Twit Handler
    consumer_key: APPLICATION_CONSUMER_KEY_HERE,
    consumer_secret: APPLICATION_CONSUMER_SECRET_HERE,
    access_token: ACCESS_TOKEN_HERE,
    access_token_secret: ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET_HERE
});

Basically, @_hakasebot does the following: * Listens for Events and keywords * Responds to Events * Like * Retweet * Reply

Listens for Events and Keywords

Twitter has a Streaming API, which gives us access to the streams of tweets. @_hakasebot uses two streams from the API: * The User Stream, which is a stream of tweets corresponding to a single user. * The Public Stream, which is the stream of all public tweets.

With the public stream, @_hakasebot can listen for tweets from any users that contains a defined keyword. This is possible when we create a stream of tweets based on a filter suing the statuses/filter endpoint, and passing an object with the filter parameters. The track parameter is used to filter tweets by keyword, and it accepts a string or an array of keywords to lookout for.

@_hakasebot runs on a filter that searches for mentions of this blog, so we’d implement as so:

const stream = TH.stream('statuses/filter', {
    track: ['hakasebot', 'hakaselabs', 'hakaselabs.github.io']
});

When a stream if open, we can listen and respond to tweets that falls within that stream.

stream.on('tweet', (tweet) => {
    // We do something with that tweet here
});

Responding to Events

We can respond to events by posting a tweet, retweeting, replying, follow a user, etc. @_hakasebot is able to take three actions currently - like, reply, and retweet.

Liking a tweet

if the tweet was from another account, the bot likes it. To like a tweet, we post to the /favourites/create endpoint, passing the id of the tweet to be favorited.

stream.on('tweet', (tweet) => {
    if (tweet.user.id == _self.id) { //
        // we'll get back to this
    }
    TH.post('favourites/create', {
        id: tweet.id_str
    });
});

Replying a tweet

If the tweet was from another user, the bot sends them a reply. We send a reply by posting to the /statuses/update endpoint and passing the id of the tweet we are replying to.

stream.on('tweet', (tweet) => {
    if (tweet.user.id == _self.id) {....}

    TH.post('favourites/create', {
        id: tweet.id_str
    });
    TH.post('statuses/update', {
        status: `@${tweet.user.screen_name} Thanks for sharing :)`,
        in_reply_to_status_id: tweet.id_str
    });
});

Retweeting

@_hakasebot retweets a tweet if it is found from my stream - That means if the tweet found from the stream is from myself @codehakase, it retweets it. We can retweet by posting to the /statuses/retweet/:id endpoint.

const _self = {
    id: 3354871743,
    screen_name: 'codehakase'
}
...

stream.on('tweet', (tweet) => {
    if (tweet.user.id == _self.id) {
        TH.post('statuses/retweet/:id', {
            id: tweet.id_str
        });
        return;
    }
    ....
});

You can get your twitter account id from here

Deploying the Bot

I used Heroku to host @_hakasebot. Since its a Node.js app, we need to place some information in our package.json file: * The main script - The file Node.js would run * Dependencies * The version of Node.js

My package.json file looks this way:

{
  "name": "hakasebot",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "A twitter bot for hakaselabs.github.io",
  "main": "bot.js",
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node bot.js"
  },
  "author": "Francis Sunday - codehakase",

  "dependencies": {
    "twit": "^2.2.5",
    "express": "^4.14.0"
  },
  "engines": {
    "node": "7.9.0"
  }
}

Great! you now have an idea of how to make bots for Twitter. You can follow @_hakasebot, view the source, to test, use the twitter share button below.

Have you built bots for Twitter? I’d like to know, drop them in the comment section below.