mileszs

Tweeting From the Command Line

A recent tweet from Tim Bray contained a link to an article explaining how to tweet from the command line. That prompted me to write a quick script to make tweeting from the command line a bit easier. You can can download the script: tweet. You can grab it from GitHub:

git clone git://github.com/MilesZS/command-line-tweet.git

You can see the script below:

#!/bin/bash

# Author: Miles Z. Sterrett <miles -dot- sterrett AT gmail -dot- com>
# Created: 03-29-08
# Updated: 03-29-08

# Sends an update to Twitter

# Uncomment and enter your own Twitter info
# to avoid having to use the command line parameters
#USER=username
#PASS=password

function force_response {
  message=$1
  local answer=

  read -e -p "$message" answer

  while [ -z $answer ]; do
    echo "You must enter a value to continue..."
    read -e -p "$message" answer
  done

  eval $2=$answer
}

while getopts "u:p:hm:" OPTION
do
  case $OPTION in
    u) 
      USER=$OPTARG
      ;;   
    p) 
      PASS=$OPTARG
      ;;   
    h) 
      usage   
      exit 1   
      ;;   
    m) 
      MESSAGE=$OPTARG
      ;;   
    ?) 
      usage   
      exit   
      ;;   
  esac
done

shift $(($OPTIND -1))

MESSAGE=$1

function usage {
  cat <<EOF
  Usage: $0 [-h] [-d DOMAIN] [-e EMAIL] [-u USER]

  This script will post a message to Twitter

  -h            This usage information.
  -m            Your message
  -p PASS   Twitter password
  -u USER       Twitter user name
 
EOF

}

if [ -z $USER ]; then
  force_response "Enter your Twitter user name: " username
  USER=$username
fi

if [ -z $PASS ]; then
  force_response "Enter your Twitter password: " password
  PASS=$password
fi

if [ -z "$MESSAGE" ]; then
  force_response "Enter your update message: " message
  MESSAGE=$message
fi

curl -u ${USER-`whoami`}:$PASS -d status="$MESSAGE" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

exit 0

I prefer to copy the script to /usr/local/bin, put my Twitter information in the script itself, and then:

tweet 'So, today, I totally wrote a bash script and stuff'

If you don't like that, you can do something like this:

./tweet -u username -p password 'DHH and Linus are actually long lost twins.  Discuss.'

If you simply execute the script, it should prompt you for the various required information.

I don't claim to be the most skilled bash scripter on the Internets. I encourage you to let me know what you think about it, fork it and improve it, or steal it and tailor it to your use.

Also, I am well aware that I spent more time on this than simplifying that curl call was really worth. I loved every freakin' minute of it, too.

Note: Some functions in this script, as well as much of the style, is courtesy of browsing scripts written by my friend Aaron Schaefer. So, thanks, Aaron!