TwitterBot by Ruby
November 29th, 2007 | Published in Uncategorized
This tutorial describes how to write your own Twitter bot by Ruby.
Plan
- Recieves DirectMessages, parses them and sends back responses.
- Keeps on being connected in Twitter via Jabber protocol.
- Written in Ruby !
Preparation
Twitter account
You need a twitter account for your bot.
Jabber ID
You need a Jabber ID for your bot to sit in Twitter. I use Jabber.JP service (free!), but you can choice whatever Jabber service you like.
If you use a GMail address for your bot, you can skip above step. (I could not connect to GTalk by GMail sub account, so took a different way)
Requirements
-
XMPP4R
- gem install xmpp4r
Code
Tiny Twitter Bot.
# require 'rubygems' require 'xmpp4r' require 'kconv'
class Reciever attr_accessor :client
# user : Jabber ID # pass : Password def initialize(user, pass) = false Jabber::debug = true
# connect Jabber client to the Server
= Jabber::Client.new(Jabber::JID.new(user), false)
(pass)
(Jabber::Presence::new)
thread = Thread.current
# a callback to parse recieved messages
do |message|
unless message.type == :error
if message.body =~ /Direct from (.*):/ # who sends DirectMessage ?
sender = $1
msg = message.body.split(/\r?\n/)
msg.shift # cut Direct from ...
msg.pop # cut last line, too
body = msg.join
#
# do whatever you like in following lines 
#
if body =~ /!abort/ # finish if told 'abort'
(Jabber::Message::new(message.from, "d #{sender} aborting...").set_type(:chat))
thread.wakeup
else
# it just echoes in this example
xxx = Kconv.toutf8("d #{sender}\n#{message.body}")
(Jabber::Message::new(message.from, xxx).set_type(:chat))
end # if body
end # if direct
end # unless error
end # callback
= Thread.new do
while not
# saying "I'm alive!" to the Jabber server
(Jabber::Presence::new)
sleep 30
end
end
end
def close = true end end # Reciever
After that, the only step remains is to create this Reciever class instance from main routine. To kill the bot, send Ctrl-C from the command line.
Let’s do some neat hacks at the lines parsing body by regexp.
Auto Follow
You need to follow your bot.
You may want your bot to counter-follow you automatically. I wrote a simple Procmail recipe and a tiny Ruby script. (original idea is にぽたん研究所::Twitter でイチイチ follow するのが面倒くさい
Procmail recipe
.procmailrc:
:0
* ^To:
| counter_follow.rb
Ruby script to follow
counter_follow.rb:
!/opt/local/bin/ruby
require 'open-uri'
ID = 'jabber bot ID' PASSWORD = 'jabber bot password'
msg = ARGF.read msg =~ /\s+http:\/\/\/(\w+)$/ screen_name = $1 exit 1 unless screen_name
auth = {'Authorization' => 'Basic '+[ID+':'+PASSWORD].pack('m')} open('http:///friendships/create/'+screen_name+'.json', auth)
Usage
-
Follow your bot from you Twitter account.
follow bot_account
-
Send a DirectMessage to your bot.
d bot_account hello bot !
Conclusion
Wrapped up a recipe how to create a tiny Twitter bot.
There were some pitfalls (it can hang up if you don’t send messages in ‘chat type’, cannot get any responses if you send something periodically, or …) in creating Twitter bot. I hope this tutorial help someone creating their own Twitter bot.
Any feedbacks make me happy
