weetwit: A twitter suite for weechat

author

Daniël Franke (@ainmosni) <daniel[at]ams-sec[dot]org>

Welcome to the wonderful world of weetwit, a plugin that will transform weechat to a (soon-to-be) fully-featured twitter client.

Features

• Realtime streaming timeline.
• Realtime search.
• Trending support.
• Tweet length counter.
• Favourite support.
• Updating, replying and retweeting according to Twitter standards.
• Aware of twitter URL shortening.
• Tools to query users and status updates.
• Able to (un-)follow directly from weechat.
• Report spammers directly from weechat.
• Share updates with IRC.
• Conversation support

Installation

Before you can use it, you have to "create" a new application at twitter, the reason for this is that I can't include the application keys without them becoming public knowledge. You can create the application at Twitter. The application needs read/write access.

First we need to install the module:

Installation through pip, note that you must get the plugin seperately.:

# pip install weetwit
$ Copy the plugin to ~/.weechat/python

Installation from source:

# cd /path/to/source/files
# pip install tweepy
# python setup.py install
$ cp plugin/weetwit.py ~/.weechat/python

Configuration of weechat:

] /python load weetwit.py
] /set plugins.var.python.weetwit.access_token access_token_goes_here
] /set plugins.var.python.weetwit.access_token_secret access_token_secret_goes_here
] /set plugins.var.python.weetwit.consumer_key consumer_key_goes_here
] /set plugins.var.python.weetwit.consumer_secret consumer_secret_goes_here
] /python reload weetwit

You should now have a running weetwit.

Configuration parameters

There are multiple configuration parameters you can alter, here is a short description of them.

• plugins.var.python.weetwit.show_in_current: Show the timeline in the current window.
• plugins.var.python.weetwit.current_while_away: Show the timeline in the current window while away.
• plugins.var.python.weetwit.current_while_detached: Show the timeline in the current window while screen/tmux detached.
• plugins.var.python.weetwit.current_color: The color of the tweets in the current buffer.
• plugins.var.python.weetwit.storage_dir: The location of where all the weetwit related files will be kept.
• plugins.var.python.weetwit.timelined_location: The location of the timelined monitoring daemon.
• plugins.var.python.weetwit.trend_woeid: The woeid you want to see trends for, defaults to worldwide.
• plugins.var.python.weetwit.nick_color: The color of @names. Use 'nick_color' if you want people colored uniquely.
• plugins.var.python.weetwit.hash_color: The color of #hashtags.
• plugins.var.python.weetwit.mention_color: The color that @people mentioned in tweets should have.
• rt_style: How RTs are displayed. 'postfix' will show the retweeter after the tweet like this (RT by @username) 'prefix' will show the retweeter before the tweet.
• expand_urls: Expand URLs, when this is on, it will show a preview of the URL before the t.co URL, if off it will only show the t.co url.

Bar items

• tweet_counter Shows the amount of characters that are typed into the timeline buffer, it's aware of t.co URL shortening.

Weechat commands

Many commands take <status identification> as argument, this can either be the ID of the status or a screen_name. In case of the screen_name, we will use the ID of last status by screen_name. (Note: if screen_name hasn't showed up in your timeline, this won't work.)

• /tweet <status>

  • Update your status, this can be 140 characters long. URLs will be shortened using t.co by twitter. You don't need this command on the dedicated timeline buffer.

• /tinfo <status identification>

  • Shows more detailed information about a status update.

• /treply [.]<status identification> <message>

  • Replies to the relevant status update, this will always start with the @screen_name of the person the status belonged to, if the identification is prefixed with a dot, a dot will be prepended to the message so that your other followers will see it as well.

• /tconversation <status identification>

  • Displays the conversation leading up this status update.

• /tfavorite <status identification>

  • Favourites a status update.

• /tunfavorite <status identification>

  • Removes a tweet from your favourites.

• /tfavorites

  • Shows your favourited tweets.

• /retweet <status identification> [message]

  • Retweets the relevant status update, if [message] is present this will prepended to the retweet.

• /tsearch <keywords>

  • Opens a new buffer with a realtime search of <keywords>, you can only have a limited amount open of these at one time, opening more might stop already existing searches.

• /tshare <status identification>

  • Shares the relevant status update with the current IRC channel.

• /twhois <screen_name>

  • Displays information about screen_name.

• /tfollow <screen_name>

  • Follows screen_name.

• /tunfollow <screen_name>

  • Unfollows screen_name.

• /trending [woeid]

  • Displays what's trending in the location represented by [woeid]. If no woeid present it uses the woeid set at plugins.var.python.weetwit.trend_woeid.

• /travail

  • Displays woeids of available trend locations.

• /treport [--yes] <screen_name>

  • Reports <screen_name> for spam. If --yes isn't added, the user won't be reported for spam.

FAQ

Q:	Why does your script spawn an extra python process?
A:	Because weechat doesn't support background threads, and blocks on long running operations, this process is what monitors your timeline.
Q:	I don't want those ugly STATUSIDs in my weetwit buffer.
A:	Add a filter like this: "/filter add statusid python.timeline * \[#STATUSID:" now you can toggle between them hidden and visible, depending on your needs.