TwIt

At least, as far as I can see, Twit.el is effectively dead, and has been since the move to Open Auth. It had some great features, and it was a great project. So thanks to TherionTlax, H Durer, DaveKerschner Ian Eure, and any other contributors. --JonathanArkell

If an enterprising developer wanted to make it live again, all they would need to do is change the auth scheme. https://github.com/psanford/emacs-oauth/ might be a good place to start.

DeleteMeIn2013

Twit.el is a wrapper library for twitter.com, and a reasonably functional client. You can post tweets, follow your friends tweets, list your friends and your followers, perform searches, retrieve @msgs and direct messages, and even use multiple accounts.

Twit.el has a novel updating mechanism that works with AutoInstall: every time twit.el is updated, I post a message with the twit_el account saying as much. You can move your point to the text “twit.el” and hit “i”, which should start the installation process.

It was originally authored by TheronTlax. H Durer, DaveKerschner, and JonathanArkell have also made contributions. Currently Jonathan Arkell is working with it. The most recent version is posted to the wiki. When Jonathan updates twit.el (or any other elisp library), he usually tweets about it, so feel free to follow him (http://www.twitter.com/jonnay). You can also follow http://www.twitter.com/twit_el for a low-traffic announce only, when new verions are up.

Additionally if you see something you want to add, or fix, feel free to change it and upload it to the wiki. Just make sure to increment the version number, and mention in the changelog what you did.

Lots of big changes have been happening recently, including: direct tweets (view/send), images, multi-account handling and sophisticated filtering.

Download and install

• Current: Lisp:twit.el
• clone (0.1.1; old?): http://github.com/ieure/twit-el
• Another clone: http://github.com/docgnome/twit.el

Save the file to a directory (suggestion: ~/.emacs.d/twit/). Add the following autoload commands to your ~/.emacs InitFile:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/twit")  ; Save directory

;; Define M-x commands

(autoload 'twit-show-recent-tweets	"twit" "" t) ; most recent direct tweets (!)
(autoload 'twit-show-at-tweets		"twit" "" t) ; directed to you
(autoload 'twit-show-friends 		"twit" "" t) ; your friends
(autoload 'twit-show-followers 		"twit" "" t) ; your followers

(autoload 'twit-follow-recent-tweets	"twit" "" t) ; at idle, check at background

(autoload 'twit-post			"twit" "" t)
(autoload 'twit-post-region		"twit" "" t)
(autoload 'twit-post-buffer		"twit" "" t)
(autoload 'twit-direct			"twit" "" t) ; tweet to person

(autoload 'twit-add-favorite		"twit" "" t) ; Add to favourite: (*) star
(autoload 'twit-remove-favorite 	"twit" "" t)

(autoload 'twit-add-friend  		"twit" "" t) ; follow a friend
(autoload 'twit-remove-friend 		"twit" "" t) ; emove a frienda

;; Customize twit-multi-accounts in order to use these: ((user . pass) ...)
(autoload 'twit-switch-account 		"twit" "" t)
(autoload 'twit-direct-with-account  	"twit" "" t)
(autoload 'twit-post-with-account 	"twit" "" t)

(autoload 'twit-show-direct-tweets-with-account "twit" "" t)
(autoload 'twit-show-at-tweets-with-account 	"twit" "" t)

Customizations

(setq twit-user "nick")
(setq twit-pass "pass")

;; Key bindings examples
;; Requires that autoloads above have been added to ~/.emacs

(global-set-key "\C-cTT"  'twit-follow-recent-tweets) ; (s)how (T)weets
(global-set-key "\C-cTst" 'twit-follow-recent-tweets) ; (s)how (t)weets
(global-set-key "\C-cTsa" 'twit-show-at-tweets)       ; (s)how (a)t
(global-set-key "\C-cTsf" 'twit-show-at-tweets)       ; (s)how (f)riends
(global-set-key "\C-cTsl" 'twit-show-at-tweets)       ; (s)how fo(l)lowers

(global-set-key "\C-cTpp" 'twit-post)		      ; (p)ost
(global-set-key "\C-cTpr" 'twit-post-region)	      ; (p)post (r)egion
(global-set-key "\C-cTpb" 'twit-post-buffer)	      ; (p)post (b)uffer
(global-set-key "\C-cTpr" 'twit-direct)		      ; (p)post (d)irect
(global-set-key "\C-cTfa" 'twit-add-favorite)	      ; (f)avorite (a)dd
(global-set-key "\C-cTfr" 'twit-remove-favorite)      ; (f)avorite (r)emove

Help

Make sure you customize the twit group, there are some interesting options there.

Posting

M-x twit-post RET will prompt for you to type your post directly in the minibuffer.

M-x twit-post-region RET will post the region and

M-x twit-post-buffer RET will post the entire contents of the current buffer.

M-x twit-direct RET will prompt you for a person to tweet to, and a message.

Showing and Following

Any time tweets are shown in a buffer, whether they are direct, @tweets, or part of the normal timeline, the buffer has a custom keymap with the following commands available:

• s - twit-show-recent-tweets - use a numeric prefix argument to skip to page x.
• f - twit-show-followers
• @ - twit-show-at-tweets
• g - reload current page (think dired) This action is still a little buggy
• w - twit-post - with a prefix argument, will grab the tweet author, or the @username and direct the message to that user
• t - twit-post-to - write a post to the user under point (either @username or author of tweet)
• r - twit-post-reply - write a reply to the current tweet under point
• R - twit-post-loud-reply - write a “loud” reply using .@
• c - twit-post-retweet
• d - twit-direct - uses the current tweet under point, or if the point is in a @username, that username.
• n - twit-next-tweet
• p - twit-previous-tweet
• * - twit-add-favorite - uses the current tweet as the id
• - - twit-remove-favorite - uses the current tweet as the id
• a - twit-add-friend - uses the current tweet under point, or if the point is in a @username, that username.
• k - twit-remove-friend - uses the current tweet under point, or if the point is in a @username, that username.
• S - twit-search
• v - twit-visit-link - visit current url, status(on timestamp), in reply to(on “in reprly to user”), twitter client(on source)
• A - twit-analyse-user - visit twanalysis page of the selected user. Press A on the titlebar for yoru twanalysis.
• G - twit-analyse-graph-user - visit twanalysis graph page of current user. Press G on the titlebar for your graph.
• i - twit-install-elisp
• q - bury-buffer (quit)
• h - twit-mode-help
• ? - twit-mode-help
• r - Reload Current Page - use a numeric prefix argument to skip to page x.

Set the customizable vars twit-show-user-images and twit-user-image-dir to show user images.

You can filter the tweets that are displayed for showing and following tweets. With the custom variable twit-filter-tweets-regex you can remove any tweets that contain a particular regex string. I used that to filter any hashtag tweets for awhile.

if you set twit-filter-at-tweets to true, twit.el will filter out any @tweets that are not directed to you, or your friends.

If you are as annoyed as I am by twitter diarrhea (when a user posts more then 3 consecutive tweets) you can filter it out, by setting twit-filter-diarrhea. It’s value is an integer which is the number of tweets before filtering takes effect. (3 is a good number)

M-x twit-show-recent-tweets RET will create a new buffer and show your most recent messages in it.

M-x twit-follow-recent-tweets RET will check your recent tweets in the background, approximately every 90 seconds. (This is set by the customizable variable twit-follow-idle-interval). If a twitter rate limit is in effect, the time between updates is increased to something reasonable.

With the twit-new-tweet-hook, you can call a function when there is a new unseen tweet. If you use ToDoChiKu you can add the function twit-todochiku to the twit-new-tweet-hook to make a notification pop up.

M-x twit-show-direct-tweets RET Shows you the most recent direct tweets that came your way.

M-x twit-show-at-tweets RET shows you all the tweets directed to you.

M-x twit-show-favorites-tweets RET will create a new buffer and show your favorite tweets in it.

M-x twit-add-favorite RET add a particular tweet to your favorites. You are prompted for the ID of the tweet, and if you are currently on a tweet, it will fill that in as a default.

M-x twit-remove-favorite RET remove a particular tweet from your favorites. As with the previous command, you are prompted for an ID, and the default is the current tweet.

Most twit-show functions accept a numeric prefix argument to show you older tweets in time. So to see page 2 of the tweets, you can hit Ctrl-2 M-x twit-show-recent-tweets RET. If you are on the twit.el buffer, you can just hit Ctrl-2 r.

Searching

M-x twit-search RET performs a twit search. Customize the variable twit-completing-searches if you want to add search terms for tab completion.

Friends

M-x twit-show-friends RET to list all your friends

M-x twit-show-followers RET to list all your followers

M-x twit-add-friend RET to add and follow a friend.

M-x twit-remove-friend RET to remove a friend

Multi-Account

A really great featuer of twit.el is the ability to use multiple twitter accounts with it. First off you need to customize the variable twit-multi-accounts. It is a list of cons cells, with the car being the username, and cdr the password. You should put your main account details in there, as well as your secondary accounts.

M-x twit-switch-account RET to switch accounts to one of your secondary accounts.

M-x twit-direct-with-account RET to send a direct message as a secondary account, and go back to the primary account.

M-x twit-post-with-account RET to post under a secondary account, and go back to the primary.

M-x twit-show-direct-tweets-with-account RET to show direct tweets under an account, and go back to the primary.

M-x twit-show-at-tweets-with-account RET to show any @tweets under an account, and go back to the primary.

I am interested in hearing from other people who use twitter in a multi-account scenario, and would like to hear feature requests!

Misc

M-x twit-install-elisp RET if the point is on the name of an emacs lisp package, twit.el will attempt to use auto-install to install that package. Very handy for twit.el updates!

M-x twit-mode RET, if you want to bother, just binds the interactive functions to some keys. Do C-h f RET twit-mode RET for more info.

Upcoming Features

• Proper internationalization. The language files will be distributed in seperate .el files, so to keep the size of twit.el down. (it’s already fairly massive…)
• Posting with a popup buffer.

Discussion

Does anyone have any thoughts on why I can’t see friends pictures as in the screenshots? I think I built emacs with image support, I can certainly look at png and eps files. -IzaakBeekman

Love it! Thanks! Made a small patch to show timestamps of tweets in the local timezone; http://gist.github.com/12509

Awesmoe! Thanks a lot! I’ve added it to the yet-unreleased 0.16 version. (Update, due it being lost in the shuffle, it never got applied. It is on 0.3 now however) – JonathanArkell

How do other twit.el users feel about not switching focus to the recent tweets window when running twit-show-recent-tweets? Then once you look at the tweets you can just type C-x 1 and get back to work. I noticed this is the behavior for ri-emacs (ruby documentation in Emacs) so I looked at their code and copied their way of doing it. It seems to work properly. Here’s my modified version of twit-show-recent-tweets: http://pastie.caboo.se/paste/246875

It also doesn’t show in the recent buffer list unless you type C-x o and change to it. If I’m not alone in preferring this behavior I can patch it or you can patch it with my version of the function. – BenAtkin

If you find twit.el asking for a username and password even after customizing one, make sure that your customized settings are loaded before you load twit.el. There is a potential race condition where twit.el requests the customized settings before they are actually set. Maybe twit-post-function should check for this condition every post? – EnigmaCurry

Hmm, I am currently on vacation right now, and it is a little hard to develop and test twit.el at the moment, but I will look at this when I can. You’re very right about the race condition htough. This should be easily fixable. – JonathanArkell

I’m using this client and it works fine, but version 0.0.21 doesn’t show my recent tweets with the default configuration. It looks like there’s a problem with the tweet filter. I’m not an elisp expert, but I made it work by setting twit-filter-tweets-regex to some non-empty value before loading twit.el, e.g:

(setq twit-filter-tweets-regex "^$")

This would filter empty lines so it’s basically a no-op. Of course you can also change twit.el directly and set that value there.

Otherwise it works fine. I’d like to be able to see users’ avatars in the buffer, I wonder if it’s hard to do. – AlbertoGarcia

Fixed! --JA

BUG: There seems to be a serious memory leak. I started a new emacs one evening and loaded twit.el. I then made one post (M-x twit-post RET). Then I invoked twit-follow-recent-tweets. I then left emacs alone. The next morning I found it had a virtual size of 3GB.

I have not investigated further as I do not really know elisp.

Using twit.el version 0.0.21 with GNU Emacs 22.1.1.

--anm

Verified. I am looking into the problem now. – JonathanArkell

Update: I have NO idea how to deal with this memory leak. Does anyone have any pointers?

I stopped having memory usage issues when i disabled flyspell for twit-mode. I’ve logged up to 3 days running Twit-recent in (Text Font Fill) without any overzealous memory usage – busytoby

(defconst twit-all-followers-list-url
  (concat twit-base-url "/statuses/followers.xml?cursor=%s"))

(defun get-all-followers (cursor acc)
  (let* ((userinfo (cadr (twit-parse-xml (format twit-all-followers-list-url cursor) "GET")))
		 (users (xml-get-children (car (xml-get-children userinfo 'users))
								  'user))
		 (next-cursor (third (car (xml-get-children userinfo 'next_cursor)))))
    (if (not (> (string-to-number (or next-cursor "0")) 0)) (concatenate 'list acc users)
      (get-all-followers next-cursor (concatenate 'list acc users)))))

(defun twit-show-all-followers ()
  "Display a list of all your twitter.com followers' names."
  (interactive)
  (pop-to-buffer
   (with-twit-buffer 
	"*Twit-followers*"
	(twit-write-title "Followers\n")
	(loop for name in
		  (loop for name in
				(loop for user in
					  (get-all-followers "-1" nil)
					  collect (eighth user))
				collect (third name))
		  for i upfrom 1
		  do (insert (propertize (format "%s\n" name)
								 'face
								 (if (= 0 (% i 2))
									 "twit-zebra-1-face"
								   "twit-zebra-2-face")
								 'twit-user name))))))

(defun bcui-twit-open-link ()
  "Open first URL in current tweet if it exists."
  (interactive)
  (when (save-excursion
	  (beginning-of-line)
	  (looking-at ".+http://"))
    (search-forward "http://")
    (twit-visit-link)))

(define-key twit-status-mode-map "o" 'bcui-twit-open-link)

Archived Discussion

I don’t personally do the cell phone thing (it sounds irritating), but anyway, they got slashdotted yesterday. I had never heard of them. But it looked cool, so i joined and wrote twit.el. I think i would like to broaden it--generalize it a bit and let users read friend’s posts. I am working on that….

I should mention that i am neither a great elisp (or other) programmer, nor much experienced with wikis, so please forgive any minor blunders.

Also, a note: twitter.com has a problem (i think it’s some kind of ham-fisted security measure) where semi-colons and plus characters (’;’ and ‘+’) get silently dropped from your post if you post by HTTP. So at the moment you can’t include those characters. Maybe others as well, but those are the ones i know of so far. – TheronTlax

Are you sure you are properly encoding your request entity? If you aren’t doing that, it might explain why + and ; are getting dropped. Btw, I LOVE twit.el.

Thanks! Well, in that case, maybe i ought to, you, know… work on it some. Sigh. So many things to do….

As for being sure i’m encoding the requests properly, well, no, i’m not sure. I did email twitter support and they said it was a known bug on their end. Maybe it’s changed by now. Oy. TheronTlax

I got tired of my Twitter Client crashing on me, so I went ahead and hacked up something to pull out the recent tweets from the friends list. I’ve posted it to the file, and you can use twit-show-recent-tweets to access it. I’d like to see better formatting on my function, and maybe even some font-faces later… but this is a start. – JonathanArkell

Annoying behaviour: Twitit ignores my username and password setting so I have to type it each time I log in. – HenryAtting

See also

Twitter

CategoryJournaling