Twitter for Node.js

An asynchronous client library for the Twitter REST and Streaming API's.

var Twitter = require('twitter');

var client = new Twitter({
  consumer_key: '',
  consumer_secret: '',
  access_token_key: '',
  access_token_secret: ''
});

var params = {screen_name: 'nodejs'};
client.get('statuses/user_timeline', params, function(error, tweets, response) {
  if (!error) {
    console.log(tweets);
  }
});

Installation

npm install twitter

Quick Start

You will need valid Twitter developer credentials in the form of a set of consumer and access tokens/keys. You can get these here. Do not forgot to adjust your permissions - most POST request require write permissions.

var Twitter = require('twitter');

For User based authentication:

var client = new Twitter({
  consumer_key: '',
  consumer_secret: '',
  access_token_key: '',
  access_token_secret: ''
});

Add your credentials accordingly. I would use environment variables to keep your private info safe. So something like:

var client = new Twitter({
  consumer_key: process.env.TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY,
  consumer_secret: process.env.TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET,
  access_token_key: process.env.TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_KEY,
  access_token_secret: process.env.TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET
});

For Application Only based authentication:

You will need to fetch a bearer token from Twitter as documented Here, once you have it you can use it as follows.

var client = new Twitter({
  consumer_key: '',
  consumer_secret: '',
  bearer_token: ''
});

Add your credentials accordingly. I would use environment variables to keep your private info safe. So something like:

var client = new Twitter({
  consumer_key: process.env.TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY,
  consumer_secret: process.env.TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET,
  bearer_token: process.env.TWITTER_BEARER_TOKEN
});

NB - You will not have access to all endpoints whilst using Application Only authentication, but you will have access to higher API limits.

Requests

You now have the ability to make GET and POST requests against the API via the convenience methods.

client.get(path, params, callback);
client.post(path, params, callback);
client.stream(path, params, callback);

REST API

You simply need to pass the endpoint and parameters to one of convenience methods. Take a look at the documentation site to reference available endpoints.

Example, lets get a list of favorites:

client.get('favorites/list', function(error, tweets, response) {
  if(error) throw error;
  console.log(tweets);  // The favorites.
  console.log(response);  // Raw response object.
});

How about an example that passes parameters? Let's tweet something:

client.post('statuses/update', {status: 'I Love Twitter'},  function(error, tweet, response) {
  if(error) throw error;
  console.log(tweet);  // Tweet body.
  console.log(response);  // Raw response object.
});

Promises

The REST API convenience methods will also return Promises if:

A callback is omitted
Promise's are available.

If those two conditions are met, the above example becomes:

client.post('statuses/update', {status: 'I Love Twitter'})
  .then(function (tweet) {
    console.log(tweet);
  })
  .catch(function (error) {
    throw error;
  })

Note, the raw response object returned by the Request module is not passed through the fulfilled promise. If you require this, please use the callback pattern.

Streaming API

Using the stream convenience method, you to open and manipulate data via a stream piped directly from one of the streaming API's. Let's see who is talking about javascript:

var stream = client.stream('statuses/filter', {track: 'javascript'});
stream.on('data', function(event) {
  console.log(event && event.text);
});

stream.on('error', function(error) {
  throw error;
});

// You can also get the stream in a callback if you prefer.
client.stream('statuses/filter', {track: 'javascript'}, function(stream) {
  stream.on('data', function(event) {
    console.log(event && event.text);
  });

  stream.on('error', function(error) {
    throw error;
  });
});

Note twitter stream several types of events, see the docs for more info. There is no canonical way of detecting tweets versus other messages, but some users have had success with the following strategy.

_ = require('lodash')
const isTweet = _.conforms({
  contributors: _.isObject,
  id_str: _.isString,
  text: _.isString,
})

Examples

Contributors

Originally authored by @technoweenie and maintained by @jdub

Currently maintained by @desmondmorris

And we cannot forget the community

desmondmorris / node-twitter

readme