tweet(1) is a very simple command-line tweeter. That is, it allows you to
send a twitter update to a given user account. It doesn't do anything
else. Well, actually, it also allows you to follow or unfollow accounts as
well as block and unblock users. So there's that. Also, this tool
suffers from feeping creatures and will (or already has) probably
spawn(ed) additional features making it not all that very simple anymore.
It's still comparatively simple, I suppose.
Requirements: - python3 - py-tweepy (http://code.google.com/p/tweepy/)
Questions/comments: jschauma@netmeister.org https://www.netmeister.org/apps/twitter/tweet/
To install the command and manual page somewhere
convenient, run make install; the Makefile defaults
to '/usr/local' but you can change the PREFIX:
$ make PREFIX=~ install
Please see the manual page for all details:
NAME
tweet - send a twitter update
SYNOPSIS
tweet [-hit] [-B user] [-F user] [-R id] [-a id] [-b user] [-c file]
[-d id] [-f user] [-l id] [-m media] [-r id] -u user
DESCRIPTION
tweet is a very simple tool to send a twitter update to the given account -
nothing else. The message to send is read from STDIN; the user account to
update needs to be configured in the file ~/.tweetrc.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported by tweet:
-B user Unblock the given user. Can be given multiple times to unblock
multiple users.
-F user Unfollow the given user. Can be given multiple times to unfollow
multiple users.
-R id Un-retweet the tweet with the given id. Can be given multiple
times to un-retweet multiple messages.
-a id Answer (ie reply) to the given id. That is, let the API sort the
new message as a reply to this message.
-b user Block the given user. Can be given multiple times to block
multiple users.
-c file Read the configuration from the given file.
-d id Delete the given message. Can be given multiple times to delete
multiple messages.
-h Print a short usage statement and exit.
-i Print the tweet ID of any new tweets.
-f user Follow the given user. Can be given multiple times to follow
multiple users.
-l id Like the given tweet. Can be given multiple times to like
multiple tweets.
-m media Upload the given media (picture or video).
-r id Retweet the tweet with the given id. Can be given multiple times
to retweet multiple messages.
-t Truncate messages that are too long.
-u user Update the given account.
DETAILS
tweet requires you to specify the username of the twitter account to which
to post the update. After that, it will read input from STDIN.
If the configuration file ~/.tweetrc contains information for exactly one
username, then tweet will update that user's status. If the file does not
contain information for the user given on the command-line, then tweet will
attempt to retrieve the access information for that account and ask the
user to update the configuration file.
If the resulting message contains 280 or fewer characters, tweet will post
the message directly, otherwise, it will complain and exit (unless the -t
flag is given).
If the -r flag is given, tweet will not read anything from STDIN and simply
retweet the messages with the given ID(s).
TWITTER AUTHORIZATION
tweet uses OAuth for authentication with Twitter. This means that in order
to run the application, it needs a so-called "consumer key" and "consumer
secret". These are retrieved by registering an application with Twitter.
Now for hopefully obvious reasons it's undesirable for an application to be
distributed with its own key and secret; unfortunately that means that
anybody wishing to run this tool would have to get their own consumer
secret and key.
Hence, if you wish to run this tool, please go to
https://developer.twitter.com/ and register a new client. Then store the
key and secret in the configuration file (see below).
CONFIGURATION FILE
tweet looks for user access information in ~/.tweetrc. It will ignore all
lines except for lines matching the patterns <user>_key=<key> and
<user>_secret=<key>. Those values need to be the access credentials
created via OAuth (which tweet will generate for you and write to the file
if not present for the given user).
In addition to these, tweet also needs its own api credentials. These are
stored as (literally) "<api>_key" and "<api>_secret" (ie the username is
"<api>", including the <>).
EXIT STATUS
The tweet utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
HISTORY
tweet was originally written by Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netmeister.org> in
January 2011.
BUGS
Please file bugs and feature requests via GitHub pull requests and issues
or by emailing the author.