After a long time I am back in the blogging world. Because I hope French and Mexican people will read this blog I have to write in English...
Since some days ago I am using twitter again (my id is yannart) but I have a big problem. From work I can't access to the main domain twitter.com. I try a personal proxy I have installed in a (secret) Internet URL and it works with some bugs. After that I start to wonder how difficult will be coding my own web app with server-side communication against twitter.
Java is my favorite programming language so I search if there where some APIs making easy the communication between a Java program and the twitter servers. I found 3:
But which one is better?Since some days ago I am using twitter again (my id is yannart) but I have a big problem. From work I can't access to the main domain twitter.com. I try a personal proxy I have installed in a (secret) Internet URL and it works with some bugs. After that I start to wonder how difficult will be coding my own web app with server-side communication against twitter.
Java is my favorite programming language so I search if there where some APIs making easy the communication between a Java program and the twitter servers. I found 3:
It's a difficult question I can't respond. However I chose Twitter4J for some simple reasons:
- Good documentation
- Asynchronous support
- IN THE OFFICIAL MAVEN REPOSITORY
Let's code a simple application!
Usually I use Eclipse or NetBeans IDEs but I this example I will use only Maven 2 so everybody can adapt it in his favorite IDEs (using the official plug-in in NetBeans o the m2eclipse plug-in in Eclipse).
So, that's what you need:
- JDK >= 1.5 (if you can, install immediately the JDK 6 update 10)
- Apache Maven 2 installed
- Internet access (to download the dependencies from Maven repository and try to retreave data from Twitter)
Creation of the project with Maven
In the console run this:
mvn archetype:create \
-DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.maven.archetypes \
-DgroupId=org.yannart.twitter \
-DartifactId=ConsoleTwitter
Maven will create the project in a folder named ConsoleTwitter.
Adding the dependencies
Open the folder of the project and edit the pom.xml file:
Add the Twitter4J dependency between the <dependencies> and </dependencies> tags:
...We need to configure the support for Java 5 because the default in Maven is Java 1.4 (for now):
<dependency>
<groupId>net.homeip.yusuke</groupId>
<artifactId>twitter4j</artifactId>
<version>1.0.6</version>
</dependency>
...
Add this code between the <project> and </project> tags:
...
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.0.2</version>
<configuration>
<source>1.5</source>
<target>1.5</target>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
...
Modify the main class to retrieve data from twitter
Go to the folder src/main/java/org/yannart/twitter/ and open the file App.java.
Replace the existing code in the main method with that one:
public static void main( String[] args ){This method will connect to Twitter using your username/password and will send the message "Updating Twitter from my own Java code!" and print your user timeline.
if(args.length != 2){
System.out.println("ERROR - you must specify a twitter username and a password.");
System.out.println("Usage: [username] [password]");
return;
}
try {
Twitter twitter = new Twitter(args[0], args[1]);
twitter.update("Updating Twitter from my own Java code!");
Liststatuses = twitter.getUserTimeline();
System.out.println(" -- " + args[0].toUpperCase() + " timeline --");
//prints each status of the public user timeline
for (Status status : statuses) {
System.out.println(" - " + status.getText());
}
} catch (TwitterException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
Compile the project
In the console go to the ConsoleTwitter folder and execute the command:
This will compile your project and create a target folder with the binaries.
mvn install
Run the project
To simplify the execution of the example, we use the exec Maven plug-in. Just run the command:
mvn exec:java -Dexec.mainClass="org.yannart.twitter.App" -Dexec.args="USERNAME PASSWORD"Downloading the sources
Remplacing USERNAME and PASSWORD with yours.
This project is ready to execute. Just download it, compile it and run it.
