UMU Baseball Twitter Application

A Twitter API application that is used to post tweets from the @umubaseball twitter page during games.

Problem to be solved

Acting as the social media manager for the University of Mount Union baseball team, I wanted a solution for making consistent, formatted tweets during games.

How I solved the problem

My solution was to build an application using the Twitter API that can Tweet from a set of predefined set of templates. What I used to build the project:

• Python
  • I had never worked with Python and saw this project as a good way to learn Python.
• TKinter
  • GUI Library used to style the application.
• Python Twitter
  • Wrapper used to work with the Twitter API (https://github.com/sixohsix/twitter)

Features of application

• Ability to Tweet from a set of predefined, formatted Tweets:
  • Start of Game
  • Lineup
  • Scoring Change
  • End Game
  • Substitution
  • Custom Tweet
• Attach image, video, or gif to any Tweet.
• After Tweet is made a check screen shows the most recent Tweet on the account to verify the success of the Tweet.
  • If a change is needed to the Tweet this page also allows to delete the Tweet
    
    

Example Tweet (Scoring Change)

To make a Tweet the user fills in the input areas. This input will be used to fill in fields of the predefined Tweet.

When the user presses Send Tweet they are prompted if they want to post media with it. After the Tweet is made the user is taken to a screen that shows if the Tweet has been posted to the @umubaseball Twitter page. This page also gives the option to delete the tweet.

Future Improvements

• Develop the application using Electron (JS, HTML, and CSS)
  • Would make distributing the app easier. Python is dificult to build desktop applications for all Operating Sytems. It was good for personal use but for future development a different solution would need to be developed.
• There is a lot of redundancy in the input fields of the app. I would like to store the opponent and score so that it would not have to be filled in every time a Tweet is made.
• Make the application have the ability to Tweet from different accounts.
  • Generalize the UI more so that it could be distributed to other teams.