Twitter bot

For this project we are going to make a twitter bot that checks to see if you have posted to git hub and if you have Tweet out the the repos that you updated for the day.

What was used

For this project I decided to use a web app Heroku to keep the code running so I didn't have to run the program every day. Other wise I would just tweet it out my self and I really don't need any more excuses to go on twitter everyday. To build the bot I used the Twitter api through tweepy and to pull the git hub commit history I used a great package PyGithub. Both are fairly user friendly and have good documentation to help you out.

Code

This is a fairly easy code to create only about 20 lines or so. The logic for this project is as follows:

• Import the necessary libraries via pip
• Go to twitter and sign up for a developer license
• Generate your keys for the Twitter account
• Set the keys in the code (side note DO NOT put your keys in the actual code if you are going to publish it on any public site like git hub)
• Link up your git hub username and password
• Standard control flow of while loop , for loop and an if statement. The for loop to check each repos latest commit date the if statement checks the dates against the current date if they match posts a tweet and the while loop to keep everything running indefinitely.
• Write a simple server to host the web app on Heroku
• Use Heroku integrated with git to push your code up to a web app so that it can run independent of your machine.
• Use the command heroku run python "your file name"to run your code.

conclusion

This project is fantastic for anyone that is starting out with programing. It's very rewarding to see a tweet pop up that you made through the twitter API and its even more rewarding to do it through an automated process. There are a few ways to tackle this problem and although Heroku doest always play nice it is good practice in package management and making sure commits are in the right order. I would recommend this project to anyone who is interested in making web applications or fun and simple twitter bots.