[infrastructure] Twitter Auto-follow

[Isaac Christoffersen]

  I did some prototyping this weekend and I'm leaning toward a cron 
solution with a ruby script.  I looked briefly into the first approach 
but since learning the innards of OFBiz is a prerequisite, it'll take a 
little more time than is probably needed to implement the twitter 
piece.  I also looked briefly into the Identi.ca APIs and, not 
surprisingly, they are similar enough to twitter so that the 
implementation can most likely be applied for both.  Database access 
won't be needed unless we want to do some correlation of followers 
compared to OSFA members.

As I understand it, these are the following scenarios:

- Have @OpenSourceGov follow its followers.
Auto following someone that follows you is a straight forward process.  
The script will need to use either an OAuth ID or the login for the 
@OpenSourceGov Twitter account.  OAuth is preferred as using the login 
information for twitter apps is being phased out.



- Have @OpenSourceGov follow its members
This is a little more difficult. Unless the users provide their screen 
names, there is no real accurate way to match individuals to their 
accounts.  Unfortunately, for this exercise, email addresses are not 
part of the public interface so we'd be guessing if the John Smith in 
Virginia is the member we want to follow.



- Have @OpenSourceGov follow those that re-tweet or reference itself.
This is doable.  It will mean periodically searching the timeline.


Does this sound correct?  If so, I can wrap up the twitter portion of 
the script for the first and third option next weekend.  Unfortunately, 
sooner is not an option as I've got some project deadlines to meet.

Isaac


On 9/30/09 10:12 AM, Ean Schuessler wrote:
> Awesome. Let me know how you would like to do it. Some approaches include:
>
> - Build it as an OFBiz service and have the OFBiz job scheduler call 
> it. (if you want to do a lot of digging in OFBiz)
> - Build it as a JSP or more straight ahead web page and have cron call 
> it with wget.
> - Build it as a stand-alone script that talks to PostgreSQL in the 
> language of your choice and have cron call it.
>
> Let me know what sounds good and we can make the arrangements.
>
> ----- "Isaac Christoffersen" wrote:
> > On today's (9/29) call it was mentioned about following twitter 
> users who are following OSFA as well as members who have twitter 
> accts.  Can't say that I've ever done it, but I've been looking a 
> little into the API and I'd be willing to work on this.
>
> -- 
> Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood.com
> ean at brainfood.com - http://www.brainfood.com - 214-720-0700 x 315


-- 
*Isaac Christoffersen*
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