tweebot 0.2.1
A simple twitter-bot command-line tool and library
License: MIT

tweebot
=======

|Build Status|

A twitter bot client, written in Python. This can be used as either a
command-line tool, or as a library imported into your Python
applications.

Requirements
============

1. Python 3.3+
2. A twitter account

Installation
============

To install:

::

    make install

Development
===========

To build the dev environment:

::

    make venv
    . venv/bin/activate
    python main.py

Configuration
=============

The application will only try to tweet if you provide a key file, which
is formatted like:

::

    CONSUMER_KEY: dsafsafafsd
    CONSUMER_SECRET: iuhbfusdfiu44
    ACCESS_KEY: vjhbv99889
    ACCESS_SECRET: ivfjslfiguhg98

*OR* the equivalent JSON.

The filename must be provided using the ``--keys`` command-line
argument.

Command-line usage
==================

Tweeting
--------

To tweet a simple status update:

::

    tweebot --keys {twitter-key-file} tweet "Hello world, this is my Tweebot status update!" -vv

You can control verbosity with the number of ``v``\ s.

More command-line options are possible, try ``--help`` to see them all.

If you use ``-`` for the tweet text, the application will use standard
input, which can be handy for piping info from your bots -- ie, use an
arbitrary application to pipe to tweebot which can tweet it out.

Following
---------

To automatically follow new followers, and unfollow unfollowers:

::

    tweebot --keys {twitter-key-file} follow --auto

Library usage
=============

There are two basic ways you can use this in a library: you can either
import the ``TwitterClient`` class and control that from your
application, or you can import tweebot's ``main`` function and provide
it with a callback that will generate your status updates.

tweebot.main
------------

If you provide a callable to ``tweebot.main``, then tweebot will use it
as a callback when the main function is called. The main method
implements all the command-line tweebot arguments, the difference is
that if the program is asked to tweet an empty status, it will instead
tweet the results of your method, called with no arguments. If you tweet
a non-empty status, that string will be handed to your method, and the
result will be tweeted:

::

    mytweebot --keys {twitter-key-file} tweet -vv

Thus, this provides a simple way to define new twitter-bots: define a
method of the form:

::

    def my_tweet_builder(status, directives):
        new_status = do_something()
        return new_status
        # or
        return new_status, new_directives

This can either ignore the status it's given, or use it in any way you
wish. If you have multiple bots that modify the status when given, then
you could run them independently, or pipe them together in novel ways
without recompiling -- your choice.

Direct client use
-----------------

If you want your application to be in control, you can simply import
``tweebot.TwitterClient`` and use its methods directly. This includes
direct API access (via tweepy) to twitter, and few custom, convenience
methods.

.. |Build Status| image:: https://travis-ci.org/kcsaff/tweebot.svg?branch=master
   :target: https://travis-ci.org/kcsaff/tweebot