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Tutorial: Updating Twitter Status via Shell Script

Posted by rio On February - 9 - 2010

The Goal

Updating twitter status via shell script. The command used to send the HTTP request is POST a.k.a lwp-request (a perl script) that included in most linux distribution.

The Process

Open your text editor i.e. gedit/geany/etc or even vi you are die hard fans of this editor.

Copy and paste code below.

#!/bin/bash
#
TUNAME="lesstalkme"
TUPASS=""
TSTATUS=""
TURL="http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml"
TDATA="source=LTME&status="
 
# print some fancy header :)
echo "-----------------------------------------"
echo "         Twitter Status Updater"
echo " http://www.less-talk-more-example.info/"
echo "------------------------------------------"
 
echo -n "Twitter Password: "
read -ers TUPASS
echo -e "\nEnter Twitter Status:"
read TSTATUS
 
# replace some characters ( I'm too lazy to replace all the characters :))
TSTATUS=`echo $TSTATUS | sed 's/ /%20/g'` # space => %20
TSTATUS=`echo $TSTATUS | sed 's/@/%40/g'` # @ => %40
TSTATUS=`echo $TSTATUS | sed 's/\//%2F/g'` # / => %2F
TSTATUS=`echo $TSTATUS | sed 's/:/%3A/g'` # : => %3B
TSTATUS=`echo $TSTATUS | sed 's/#/%23/g'` # # => %23
 
# now POST the data
echo ""
echo -n "Updating status..."
echo "${TDATA}${TSTATUS}" | POST -C $TUNAME:$TUPASS $TURL | grep $TUNAME > /dev/null
# check status
# ------------
# successfull request always return XML format that containts our username
# so we grep that to check the status
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  echo "DONE."
else
  echo "ERROR."
fi

Replace TUNAME value with your own username.
Save to somewhere i.e. /tmp directory just for testing.
Name it twitter.sh
Open the shell terminal in GNOME System » Application » Terminal
Go to /tmp directory and give execute permission to the file.
```
$ cd /tmp
$ chmod +x twitter.sh
```
Execute the file, you’ll be promted to enter twitter password and status.
```
$ ./twitter.sh
```
Fill it and voila!! your twitter status has been updated :).