How to retrieve your twitter feeds in PERL

Retrieving twitter feeds is very simple and easy, you only need an HTTP request that returns format such as JSON, XML, RSS, and ATOM. This method doesn't require authentication.

Just follow the simple steps below using PERL. Hope you like it!

1. Install LWP::UserAgent in your server.

2. Initialize libraries, header and user agent.

require LWP::UserAgent;

my $lwpua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

my $uagent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6";
my @header = ('Referer' => 'http://api.twitter.com/',
             'User-Agent' => $uagent);

3. Compose the HTTP request.

my $twuser = '<your twitter username>';
my $twurl = "http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.<format>?screen_name=$twuser";

Supported Format:

• JSON
• XML
• RSS
• ATOM

URL Parameters:

• user_id - The id of twitter account you want to retrieve.
• screen_name - The username of twitter account you want to retrieve.
• since_id - This will return the feeds after or more than the specified message id.
• max_id - This will return the feeds before or less than the specified message id.
• count - The number of tweets to be retrieve.
• page - This will specify the page of the result to retrieve.
• trim_user - When set to either true, t or 1, each tweet returned in a timeline will include a user object including only the status authors numerical id.
• include_rts - When set to either true, t or 1, the timeline will contain native retweets (if they exist) in addition to the standard stream of tweets.
• include_entities - When set to either true, t or 1, each tweet will include a node called "entities". This node offers a variety of metadata about the tweet in a discreet structure, including: user_mentions, urls, and hashtags. While entities are opt-in on timelines at present, they will be made a default component of output in the future.

4. Execute HTTP GET request.

my $response = $lwpua->get($twurl, @header);
my $return = $response->content;


That's it!! Please see below for the complete code using JSON format.

#!/usr/bin/perl

require LWP::UserAgent;
use JSON;

my $lwpua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

my $uagent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6";
my @header = ('Referer' => 'http://api.twitter.com/', 'User-Agent' => $uagent);

my $twuser = '<your twitter username>';
my $twurl = "http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.json?screen_name=$twuser";

my $response = $lwpua->get($twurl, @header);
my $return = $response->content;

my $json = JSON->new->allow_nonref;
my $json_text = $json->decode($return);

my @tweets = @{$json_text};

my $message;
foreach $tweet (@tweets)
{
  $message .= $tweet->{text}."\n";
}

print "$message";



1;

Resource: dev.twitter.com