How to post tweet using OAuth access Token in PERL

OAuth access Token was gain from my previous post - How to exchange requested Token for an access Token from Twitter in PERL

In posting a tweet, we will use the resource URL - http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json and the POST method.

Just follow the steps below to post tweet on users behalf.

1. Install the following libraries.

• LWP::UserAgent
• HTTP::Cookies
• Digest::MD5
• Digest::SHA
• POSIX

2. Initialize the libraries.

require LWP::UserAgent;

use HTTP::Cookies;

use Digest::MD5 qw(md5 md5_hex md5_base64);
use Digest::SHA qw(sha1 sha1_hex sha1_base64 hmac_sha1 hmac_sha1_hex hmac_sha1_base64);

use POSIX qw(strftime);

my $lwpua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

3. Setup the UserAgent and HTTP header with the name "Authorization" equal to "OAuth".

my $uagent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6";
my @header = ('Referer' => 'https://api.twitter.com/',
             'User-Agent' => $uagent,
             'Authorization' => 'OAuth');

4. Build the signature base and signing key. Please take note that some parameters should be URL Encoded, see the post for the PERL function that you can use - URLENCODE sub function in PERL.

You need the consumer key and secret which was generated by Twitter upon registration.

You also need the Oauth Token and Secret which you get when exchanging the requested token for an access token.

To generate NONCE, we use Digest::MD5::md5_base64() passing the localtime(). We do it twice to make it much UNIQUE.

Timestamp was generated by using POSIX::strftime() with date format UNIXTIME as "%s".

Signing key was generated by combining the 2 parameters: Consumer Secret and OAuth Token Secret delimited by ampersand "&"

my $strToken = "<your oauth access token>";
my $strSecret = "<your oauth access token secret>";
my $strStatus = "<your tweet>";

my $post_url = "http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json";
my $nonce = md5_base64(localtime()).md5_base64(localtime());
my $timestamp = strftime('%s', localtime);
my $method = "HMAC-SHA1";
my $version = "1.0";
my $consumer_key = "<your consumer key generated upon registration>";
my $consumer_secret = "<your consumer secret generated upon registration>";

my $post_urlenc = &urlencode($post_url);
my $status_enc = &urlencode($strStatus);

my $oauth_data = "oauth_consumer_key=$consumer_key&oauth_nonce=$nonce&oauth_signature_method=$method&oauth_timestamp=$timestamp&oauth_token=$strToken&oauth_version=$version&status=$status_enc";
my $oauth_dataenc = &urlencode($oauth_data);

my $sign_base = "POST&".$post_urlenc."&".$oauth_dataenc;
my $sign_key = $consumer_secret."&".$strSecret;

5. Generate the OAuth Signature using HMAC-SHA1 method.

my $oauth_sign = hmac_sha1_base64($sign_base, $sign_key)."=";

6. Post an OAuth request with all the parameters you passed on step #4.

my $response = $lwpua->post($post_url,
                        ['oauth_token' => $strToken,
                         'oauth_consumer_key' => $consumer_key,
                         'oauth_nonce' => $nonce,
                         'oauth_signature_method' => $method,
                         'oauth_signature' => $oauth_sign,
                         'oauth_timestamp' => $timestamp,
                         'status' => $strStatus,
                         'oauth_version' => $version], @header);

print $response->content;

7. To know if successful, you can print the response and it should be look like this.

{
    "geo":null,
    "created_at":"Mon Apr 26 23:45:50 +0000 2010",
    "in_reply_to_user_id":null,
    "truncated":false,
    "place":null,
    "source":"&lt;a href=\"http://dev.twitter.com\" rel=\"nofollow\"&gt;OAuth Dancer&lt;/a&gt;",
    "favorited":false,
    "in_reply_to_status_id":null,
    "contributors":null,
    "user":
    {
        "contributors_enabled":false,
        "created_at":"Wed Mar 07 22:23:19 +0000 2007",
        "description":"Reality Technician,
         Developer Advocate at Twitter,
         Invader from the Space.",
        "geo_enabled":true,
        "notifications":false,
        "profile_text_color":"000000",
        "following":false,
        "time_zone":"Pacific Time (US &amp; Canada)",
        "verified":false,
        "profile_link_color":"731673",
        "url":"http://bit.ly/5w7P88",
        "profile_background_image_url":"http://a3.twimg.com/profile_background_images/19651315/fiberoptics.jpg",
        "profile_sidebar_fill_color":"007ffe",
        "location":"San Francisco,
         CA",
        "followers_count":1220,
        "profile_image_url":"http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/836683953/zod_normal.jpg",
        "profile_background_tile":true,
        "profile_sidebar_border_color":"bb0e79",
        "protected":false,
        "friends_count":1275,
        "screen_name":"episod",
        "name":"Taylor Singletary",
        "statuses_count":5733,
        "id":819797,
        "lang":"en",
        "utc_offset":-28800,
        "favourites_count":89,
        "profile_background_color":"000000"
    },
    "in_reply_to_screen_name":null,
    "coordinates":null,
    "id":12912397434,
    "text":"setting up my twitter \u79c1\u306e\u3055\u3048\u305a\u308a\u3092\u8a2d\u5b9a\u3059\u308b"
}


Please see the complete code below.

#!/usr/bin/perl

require LWP::UserAgent;

use strict;
use warnings;

use HTTP::Cookies;

use Digest::MD5 qw(md5 md5_hex md5_base64);
use Digest::SHA qw(sha1 sha1_hex sha1_base64 hmac_sha1 hmac_sha1_hex hmac_sha1_base64);

use POSIX qw(strftime);


my $lwpua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

my $uagent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6";
my @header = ('Referer' => 'https://api.twitter.com/',
             'User-Agent' => $uagent,
             'Authorization' => 'OAuth');

# build signature base
my $strToken = "<your oauth access token>";
my $strSecret = "<your oauth access token secret>";
my $strStatus = "<your tweet>";

my $post_url = "http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json";
my $nonce = md5_base64(localtime()).md5_base64(localtime());
my $timestamp = strftime('%s', localtime);
my $method = "HMAC-SHA1";
my $version = "1.0";
my $consumer_key = "<your consumer key generated upon registration>";
my $consumer_secret = "<your consumer secret generated upon registration>";

my $post_urlenc = &urlencode($post_url);
my $status_enc = &urlencode($strStatus);
my $oauth_data = "oauth_consumer_key=$consumer_key&oauth_nonce=$nonce&oauth_signature_method=$method&oauth_timestamp=$timestamp&oauth_token=$strToken&oauth_version=$version&status=$status_enc";
my $oauth_dataenc = &urlencode($oauth_data);

my $sign_base = "POST&".$post_urlenc."&".$oauth_dataenc;
my $sign_key = $consumer_secret."&".$strSecret;

# oauth signature
my $oauth_sign = hmac_sha1_base64($sign_base, $sign_key)."=";

# post oauth request
my $response = $lwpua->post($post_url,
                        ['oauth_token' => $strToken,
                         'oauth_consumer_key' => $consumer_key,
                         'oauth_nonce' => $nonce,
                         'oauth_signature_method' => $method,
                         'oauth_signature' => $oauth_sign,
                         'oauth_timestamp' => $timestamp,
                         'status' => $strStatus,
                         'oauth_version' => $version], @header);

print $response->content;



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How to post tweet on twitter via backend using PERL

Just like from my previous post, you should know how the wap site works, from log-in up to sending your tweets.

If you still have no idea on how the twitter works, just follow the steps below and you will be able to send tweets in minutes.

1. Same on how we do it on facebook, we need to install the following libraries on our server.

• LWP::UserAgent
• HTTP::Cookies

2. Once installed, we are now ready to do the coding part. we have to require and initialize the libraries and variables that we will be using.

require LWP::UserAgent;

use strict;
use warnings;

use HTTP::Cookies;

my $lwpua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

my $user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6";
my @header = ( 'Referer' => 'http://mobile.twitter.com/','User-Agent' => $user_agent);

my $cookie_file = "cookies.dat";
my $cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies->new(
file => $cookie_file,
autosave => 1,
ignore_discard => 1);

$lwpua->cookie_jar($cookie_jar);


3. Input your twitter account username, password, and your tweet you wish to be posted.

my $strUser = "<your twitter username>";
my $strPass = "<your twitter password>";
my $strTweet = "<your tweet>";


4. Get the authenticity_token using REGEX from the twitter session url http://mobile.twitter.com/session/new. token will be use as parameter in submitting your credentials to the wap site. i also pasted the form element of the login page below as reference.

=begin
<form action="https://mobile.twitter.com/session" method="post">
<input name="authenticity_token" type="hidden" value="22a9872b3a17abd635a4" />
<input autocapitalize="off" autocorrect="off" id="username" name="username" type="text" />
<input id="password" name="password" type="password" />
<input class="signup" type="submit" value="Sign in" />
</form>
=cut

$form_data =~ s/\n//g;
$form_data =~ /input name="authenticity_token" type="hidden" value="(.*?)"/ig;

my $auth_token = $1;


5. Use the token to login by posting it to the form action url above: https://mobile.twitter.com/session and save the cookie for the nest session.

# logged in to twitter
$response = $lwpua->post('https://mobile.twitter.com/session',
['username' => $strUser,
'password' => $strPass,
'authenticity_token' => $auth_token], @header);

$cookie_jar->extract_cookies( $response );
$cookie_jar->save;

$response = $lwpua->get('http://mobile.twitter.com', @header);
$form_data = $response->content;


6. Upon submission of credentials, you should be able to log-in successfully. to check it, you should be able to see the "What's happenning?" and the textarea in which you will input your tweet. again, get the authenticity token using REGEX below for the next session.

=begin
<form action="http://mobile.twitter.com/" class="new_tweet" id="new_tweet" method="post">
<input name="authenticity_token" type="hidden" value="22a9872b3a17abd635a4" />
<div class="tweetbox-head">What's happening?</div>
<textarea class="tweet_input" cols="44" id="tweet_text" name="tweet[text]" rows="2"></textarea>
<input class="tweet-btns" type="submit" value="Tweet" />
</form>
=cut

$form_data =~ s/\n//g;
$form_data =~ /input name="authenticity_token" type="hidden" value="(.*?)"/ig;

$auth_token = $1;


7. And now, you are ready to post your tweet. by passing tweet[text] parameter together with the authenticity_token.

# posting tweet on twitter
@header = ( 'Referer' => 'http://mobile.twitter.com/', 'User-Agent' => $user_agent );
$response = $lwpua->post('http://mobile.twitter.com/',
['tweet[text]' => $strTweet,
'authenticity_token' => $auth_token], @header);

$form_data = $response->content;
unlink($cookie_file);


8. To get the complete code, please see below. hope you were able to follow. happy coding!!

#!/usr/bin/perl

require LWP::UserAgent;

use strict;
use warnings;

use HTTP::Cookies;

my $lwpua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

my $user_agent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6";
my @header = ( 'Referer' => 'http://mobile.twitter.com/','User-Agent' => $user_agent);

my $cookie_file = "cookies.dat";
my $cookie_jar = HTTP::Cookies->new(
file => $cookie_file,
autosave => 1,
ignore_discard => 1);

$lwpua->cookie_jar($cookie_jar);

my $strUser = "<your twitter username>";
my $strPass = "<your twitter password>";
my $strTweet = "<your tweet>";

# get authenticity token
my $response = $lwpua->get('http://mobile.twitter.com/session/new', @header);
my $form_data = $response->content;

$form_data =~ s/\n//g;
$form_data =~ /input name="authenticity_token" type="hidden" value="(.*?)"/ig;

my $auth_token = $1;

# logged in to twitter
$response = $lwpua->post('https://mobile.twitter.com/session',
['username' => $strUser,
'password' => $strPass,
'authenticity_token' => $auth_token], @header);

$cookie_jar->extract_cookies( $response );
$cookie_jar->save;

$response = $lwpua->get('http://mobile.twitter.com', @header);
$form_data = $response->content;

$form_data =~ s/\n//g;
$form_data =~ /input name="authenticity_token" type="hidden" value="(.*?)"/ig;

$auth_token = $1;

# posting tweet on twitter
@header = ( 'Referer' => 'http://mobile.twitter.com/', 'User-Agent' => $user_agent );
$response = $lwpua->post('http://mobile.twitter.com/',
['tweet[text]' => $strTweet,
'authenticity_token' => $auth_token], @header);

$form_data = $response->content;
unlink($cookie_file);



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