reply

A bot for replying to twitter posts that match criteria

##Usage:

####Prerequisites:

Create a twitter app:

• go to https://dev.twitter.com/
• sign in with an account or create one (¡WARNING: YOU MAY FLOOD TWITTER WITH TWEETS FROM THIS ACCOUNT. BE CAREFUL!)
• add a new application
• go to the settings for the app, and set it to "Read & Write" Access
• go to the application credentials page and generate an access token in the "Your access token" section

you'll use the tokens from this page later. Keep it open.

####Local Setup:

clone this repo.

add a file called runtime.json to the config directory.

put a config in it like this:

{
  "twitter" : {
    "consumer_key" : "<your consumer key>",
    "consumer_secret" : "<your consumer key>",
    "access_token_key" : "<your access token>",
    "access_token_secret" : "<your access token secret>"
  },
  "keywords" : "words to match in tweet",
  "match" : "a string or regex. (capture groups are allowed)",
  "replies" : [
    "some reply. Can reference parts of the tweet like [user.screen_name] or regex matches like $1"
  ],
  "max_replies_per_minute" : 6,
  "in_reply_to" : true
}

This should be somewhat self explanatory, here's the idea:

when a tweet matches the keywords (as detailed here), it will be tested against the "match" param, and replied to if it passes.

match can be a string, or a regex. All regexes are case insensitive, but you can specify capture groups to use in your replies if you want.

replies is an array. A random reply will be selected from this array, parsed, and tweeted by the authenticating account. replies will replace $n items with matches from the original tweet. replies can contain square-bracket surrounded attributes to pick from the original tweet too. You can see the options in the example response here. For instance (and probably the most useful), you could at-tweet a user by adding @[user.screen_name] to the beginning of a reply.

max_replies_per_minute is there to help you not hit the API limits. 1000/day is the global limit. This will only tweet when it can though, so if there is ALWAYS a tweet to respond to queueing up, the max would be 0.695. However, this is unlikely for normal uses, so your number could be considerably higher. Default is one per minute.

in_reply_to will mark the tweet as being in reply to the tweet. This will cause twitter to show it in the conversation view. Turn it off if you're just randomly tweeting.

####Heroku Deployment:

To make it even easier to spam the world, you can deploy this to a heroku app with very little setup:

copy or create a heroku.json file inside the config directory. Same params as above.

Install the Heroku Toolbelt

install the config-heroku command line:

npm install -g config-heroku

type heroku create <your clever app name> into your terminal in the same directory as this app.

type config-heroku save, and when prompted (after confirming your config) enter y and hit enter twice (sorry, that's a bug...)

type git push heroku

now your annoying twitter bot is running in the cloud like a boss. If you're interested in what it's doing you can type heroku logs -t, and you'll get streaming logs of what it's been up to.

####Notes:

This project was inspired by a tweet by @startupljackson. I don't know him, but somebody retweeted it and I thought it was a good idea.

Here's the config to use this lib to do what is described in that tweet:

{
  "twitter" : {
    "consumer_key" : "<your consumer key>",
    "consumer_secret" : "<your consumer key>",
    "access_token_key" : "<your access token>",
    "access_token_secret" : "<your access token secret>"
  },
  "keywords" : "I just ousted",
  "match" : "I just ousted @([\\w]+) as the mayor of (.+?) on @foursquare!",
  "replies" : [
    "@[user.screen_name] Nobody Gives a shit, douchenozzle."
  ]
}

As of this writing, the bot described above is running under the twitter account @nobodygivesshit.

Startup L. Jackson, if you want the keys they're yours, or I'll shut that one down if you want to set up a different reply repo.

License:

You're free to use this for anything you want as long as you follow these rules:

Don't be a dick

####Bugs:

Bugs can be filed here in github, or by contacting me directly:

#####Jesse Ditson

#####(twitter) @jesseditson

#####(email) [email protected]