Is developer status even what I want/need?

[wpeerts]

Greetings,

Before I type anything substantive, I want to note that, yes, I am clueless.

I am in charge of a Twitter project at my work: we’re going to launch an account soon, and my boss, naturally I guess, wants to know whether we can do things that I think a plain ol’ Twitter account doesn’t supply.

Example: he wants to know whether we can somehow access / track / store all the responses to the account’s tweets. Of course the default stats file gives the number of likes, responses, etc, but he is looking for more.

Because of requests like this, I decided to apply for developer status.

I got it, but it seems that in order to really get everything set up, I have to create some kind of Twitter ‘app.’ Reference the message “You’ll need an app and API key in order to authenticate and integrate with most Twitter developer products. Create an app to get your API key.”

Here is where I go all clueless and you may amply indulge your desire to laugh at me. I have no idea how to proceed. This is doubtless because I am not a very good programmer. Most of the work I’ve done here has been simple-to-moderately complex Perl programming, most of THAT involving connecting to databases. I feel a bit out of my element here.

Is this confusion happening because a Dev account really isn’t what I need (I am factoring in my aging brain, my overcaffeinated state, etc)? If not a Dev account, then … what? how do I get more advanced statistics, etc., things like that?

Thanks,

Glenn

[poisonborz]

As the stats page / manual summary is all that Twitter provides, yes, you need to write an app. (app, as on the Twitter dev page, means just an API access - that you can access the data interface of Twitter to get posts and their replies likes etc via REST calls, and then display it in an application or a webpage. You can do that in any popular language you feel comfortable with. I saw a few Perl Twitter API libraries when you google it, the next alternative might be Javascript/Node.js, as it’s the most popular nowadays and you will find resources easily.
This all might sound daunting to you - you have to consider if it’s worth it for this specific project.

[wpeerts]

Thanks for the reply.

What confused me was language on the site that at least seemed to be saying “in order to use the API, you need to link here to an app you’ve written that shows how you are using the API” (that API I haven’t been given access to yet).

If I read your response and interpolate correctly, there are many APIs out there, and many of them are free. I need to use one of these APIs (Perl or, better, Python since I’m trying to learn Python) and link to it for access to the, well, uber- or developer-API.

Is that correct?

I’m not sure it’s stated that clearly on the site, but I’m getting old and my attention may have drifted. Or I just don’t know how things are usually done.

Thanks again,

Glenn

[andypiper]

As of 2 weeks ago, everyone that wants to create a new app to use any Twitter API must now apply for a developer account.

The language and library you choose to access the API is not a factor here.

The majority of the API surface is free to use (no financial charge), but there are exceptions depending on your needs. In your case it sounds like a free endpoint in an existing well-support language library is going to work, but you’ll need to go through the application process. In the near future, all developers using the Twitter API (regardless of language or library or SDK, and regardless of whether the endpoint is commercial or not) will need to follow the exact same process.

[wpeerts]

Andy,

Thanks for the reply. I applied for a developer account in Jan. 12 of this year and received an email that read

Your Twitter developer account application has been approved!

Thanks for applying for access. We’ve completed our review of your application, and are excited to share that your request has been approved.

Do I need to repeat this process?

And I don’t mean this in a snarky way, but what in tarnation is an endpoint? I expect this is just my inexperience.

Thanks,

Glenn

[computa_mike]

And I don’t mean this in a snarky way, but what in tarnation is an endpoint? I expect this is just my inexperience.
hi @wpeerts - An EndPoint is a web address that you can communicate with to accomplish something with the twitter API - For example if you want to search tweets for a specific tweet (docs for it are here : https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/search/api-reference/get-search-tweets)

In the example on the page, they give an example :

$ curl --request GET 
 --url 'https://api.twitter.com/1.1/search/tweets.json?q=nasa&result_type=popular' 
 --header 'authorization: OAuth oauth_consumer_key="consumer-key-for-app", 
 oauth_nonce="generated-nonce", oauth_signature="generated-signature", 
 oauth_signature_method="HMAC-SHA1", oauth_timestamp="generated-timestamp", 
 oauth_token="access-token-for-authed-user", oauth_version="1.0"'

Here the end point is https://api.twitter.com/1.1/search/tweets.json - so that the web address that you issue the query against - Notice that there are parts of the URL where you can put in your ‘Consumer-key’ etc.

In this example the API is being used to find popular tweets containing the term ‘nasa’

[LeBraat]

Do I need to repeat this process?

You do not need to repeat the process. You should be able to see any existing Twitter apps or to create a new Twitter app on this page.

You can learn all about Twitter apps and the developer portal at those respective links.

At this time, it is not easy to just receive the replies to Tweets. You’d have to parse the mentions timeline for replies to that account’s Tweet IDs.

[system]

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