Crontab : Automating our bot

After reading the first post you might be thinking that the Bot we just made is not at all automated it is just an application to post tweets.
Don't be disappointed after reading this post you definitely will be able to automate your application.
If you are a unix/linux programmer you might very well about unix cron jobs that allows you to automate any command line program chronologically and thats the sole magic we are looking forward to right know.
First of edit your login.py file as follows:

import twitter

import random as rm

a=['python with php ver1','python with php ver2','python with php ver3','python with php ver4','python with php ver5','python with php ver6','python with php ver7','python with php ver8','python with php ver9','python with php ver10']


api = twitter.Api(consumer_key='your_key',consumer_secret='your_key',access_token_key='your_key',access_token_secret='your_key')



status=api.PostUpdate(a[rm.randrange(1,10)])

print status.text

Here as you can see what we did is that we created a list of post as twitter doesn't allow to post same tweet twice.
Now we will automate this login.py chronologically to post tweets in a timely manner.
Now start your unix system and goto terminal and do the following things:

1.) Type the following command:

crontab -e.

What this command does is it opens the editor for creating a cron job file in your /var/tmp folder.

2.) The basic format of your cron job has following syntax:

       minute hour day month day-of-week command-line-to-execute


This defines the timely format for running your script
You find the reference here and here too

3.) Now I wanted to post a tweet each and every minute of everyday of every month and so on...So I edited my cron file as follows

       */2 * * * * /usr/bin/python /home/maitray/htdocs/login.py
       

Now enter the new line at the end of the file and close it.It will be auto
saved.
Here the last parameter shows the location of your login.py file.

4.) Alls well that ends well just check your twitter account for bots tweets
You can see my twitter page That has all the tweets posted by the bot.

And that concludes the complete tutorial for twitter bots using python.Thanks
And feel free to contact me for any related queries and feedback

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The Python Tutorial for Twitter Bots

If you are a programmer and if even once in your lifetime a thought popped out of your mind to build a python bot for twitter then you have arrived the right place.
Today I will write down the step by step tutorial to build a simple python bot.

• First Things First Up

1. As you cannot directly start exercising and you need to warm up first, in the same way you need a twitter application for the purpose of building twitter bot. If you already have an application with all 'read,write and access direct messages' privileges set you can directly skip below steps.
2. To create an application go to http://dev.twitter.com and sign in with your twitter account
3. Then click on create new application
4. Fill out name, description, and website fields also one thing you need to keep in mind that you don't need to specify the callback URL field as no callback is needed for our bot. And then click on create your twitter application.
5. After the application has been created go to settings tab and click on 'read,write and access direct messages' radio button under Application Type and then click on update this settings(Note: This is one of the most important steps as because if you forget to give all privileges in app you will get exhausted finding out the error after whole set up is ready.)
6. Now again go to details tab and click on 'create my access token' and now go to oauth tool tab and you can see all the keys and secret ready.Keep it open or copy all the keys and token because you will need it again.

•  Gearing Up Further

1. Now I believe you already have python ready on your laptop then you can move along as below else check out How to install python on windows? on this page.
2. Now download the following following zipped file here and extract it in a suitable folder.
3. Now using command line in your respective directory enter the following command.
   python setup.py build
   python setup.py install
4. Now create a new file and name it login.py and enter the following python code in to it.

import twitter 

#enter your consumer key,secret and access token secret,key in below function as parameters 

api=twitter.Api(consumer_key='',consumer_secret='',access_token_key='',access_token_secret='') 

#now using PostUpdate method of the api we can use to post an update on twitter account 

status = api.PostUpdate('My first tweet using python..:):):):)') 
print status.text 
   4. Now go to command line and the respective dir and then run your login.py file.
   You can get all the Api reference here.
Now everything goes well then congrats you have made your first tweet auto updater using python!!
Also you can check your tweet on your twitter page.
The following post shows how to use crontab to automatically update tweets.
   

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