It certainly shouldn't be difficult, but I always have a tough time with OAuth. Twitter is dropping support for basic authentication on June 30th, 2010. I have some automated Twitter bots that need an upgrade, so I've been working on a quick solution to generate tokens for my scripts.
I formulated a pretty simple script using John Nunemaker's twitter gem that will get it done manually for any scripts you have that read from or update Twitter:
#!/usr/bin/ruby require 'rubygems' require 'twitter' # These credentials are specific to your *application* and not your *user* # Get these credentials from Twitter directly: http://twitter.com/apps application_token = '[this should be the shorter one]' application_secret = '[this should be the longer one]' oauth = Twitter::OAuth.new(application_token,application_secret) request_token = oauth.request_token.token request_secret = oauth.request_token.secret puts "Request token => #{request_token}" puts "Request secret => #{request_secret}" puts "Authentication URL => #{oauth.request_token.authorize_url}" print "Provide the PIN that Twitter gave you here: " pin = gets.chomp oauth.authorize_from_request(request_token,request_secret,pin) access_token = oauth.access_token.token access_secret = oauth.access_token.secret puts "Access token => #{oauth.access_token.token}" puts "Access secret => #{oauth.access_token.secret}" oauth.authorize_from_access(access_token, access_secret) twitter = Twitter::Base.new(oauth) puts twitter.friends_timeline(:count => 1)
When you run the script, it will give you a request token, request secret and a URL to visit. When you access the URL, you'll be given a PIN. Type the PIN into the prompt and you'll get your access token and secret. This is what you can use to continue authenticating with Twitter, so be sure to save the access token and secret.
From then on, you should be able to login with a script like this:
#!/usr/bin/ruby require 'rubygems' require 'twitter' application_token = '[this should be the shorter one]' application_secret = '[this should be the longer one]' oauth = Twitter::OAuth.new(application_token,application_secret) oauth.authorize_from_access(access_token, access_secret) twitter = Twitter::Base.new(oauth) puts twitter.friends_timeline(:count => 1)
I hope this helps!
NICE! I have been meaning to take the time to look at this but have not...appreciate this post a lot!
thanks, very helpful!
Twitter::OAuth was removed in 1.0, so if you're using a newer version of the twitter gem, you will run into problems.
Otherwise, good post.
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-twitter-gem/browse_thread/thread/be600e4ffc5f6646#