tweetie

Reports on IRC when the user is mentioned on Twitter, allows to reply or tweet

Dependencies

• POE, POE::Component::IRC, POE::Component::IRC::Plugin::BotCommand (Debian packages libpoe-perl and libpoe-component-irc-perl)
• Net::Twitter::Lite::WithAPIv1_1 and Net::OAuth (Debian packages libnet-oauth-perl and libnet-twitter-lite-perl)
• Net::OAuth::Simple (not in Debian, find it on CPAN)

Configuration

tweetie parses $HOME/.tweetie.pl and expects it to define a few variables. As a minimum, it has to contain

$consumer_key = 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX;
$consumer_secret = 'YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY;
%irc_config = (
 server => 'the.irc.server',
);

$consumer_key and $consumer_secret are the Twitter API key and secret you wish to use, respectively. Go to apps.twitter.com and select "Create New App" to generate keys.

%irc_config is a hash that specifies how to connect to the IRC server. This is passed directly to POE::Component::IRC->spawn; refer to the POE IRC library documentation for details about legal keys and values.

Run tweetie from the command line:

perl tweetie.pl

It tries to connect to the IRC server configured in .tweetie.pl and prints some diagnostic output. A line irc_001 means connection was successful.

Usage

Once tweetie is running and connected to the IRC server, invite it to a channel:

/invite tweetie

(The nickname can be changed in the configuration file, see above.) Tweetie can be on multiple channels at once and can be connected to multiple Twitter accounts, one per IRC channel.

If tweetie has been on this channel before, it may remember what it was doing there. If it joins the channel and says: "Hi, I'm tweeting as JoeTweeter" and JoeTweeter is indeed the Twitter handle you want to use, it means it is already connected to Twitter and you can skip this step. Otherwise, connect to a Twitter account in two steps:

tweetie, login

(A : instead of a , works, too.) Tweetie replies with a URL (https://api.twitter.com/...). Copy and paste that into a browser (making sure you have JavaScript and cookies turned on). On the resulting Web page, enter the username (or e-mail) and password of the Twitter account and press "Authorize app".

Note: if you are not asked for a username and password, the browser is probably already logged in to Twitter. Make sure it is logged in to the right account, or "sign out" first and try the same URL again.

Twitter should now show a Web page with a 6-digit number. Go back to IRC and give that number to tweetie (replacing 123456 with the number from the Web page):

tweetie, pin 123456

Tweetie should reply with: “tweetie is now tweeting as JoeTweeter" (or whatever the Twitter account).

Now that tweetie is connected to Twitter, simply watch the channel for any messages, i.e., tweets from others that mention your Twitter handle.

To tweet something yourself, use tweetie's say command:

tweetie, say Feeling #happy. The #sun is shining.

Tweetie also has commands reply, to reply to the most recent message:

tweetie, reply Thanks!

and status, to show your own most recent tweet:

tweetie, status

There is no command to make tweetie quit. To make it stop listening to Twitter, use the login command (and ignore the URL it prints). Then kick it off the channel:

tweetie, login
/kick tweetie

If you forget the login command, tweetie continues to listen to Twitter and forward tweets to the channel, even after it has been kicked off.

Known bugs

Tweetie doesn't reconnect to IRC after a network error. It has to be killed and restarted.

Development

tweetie's source repository lives at https://github.com/w3c/tweetie.