CoolFoursquareBro

This is a python twitter bot, inspired by the following tweet by the ever-amusing @iamdevloper:

This module queries the target user's recent tweets, and if any are determined to be foursquare noise, they get responded to in the manner above (the messages are configurable!)

Disclaimer

I wrote this script to get a bit more python practice, and also to have a bit of fun with a friend who's a foursquare fan (and has a good sense of humour). It's up to you to make sure that you don't use this script in a spammy/harassing way. Also ensure that you call it in a way that obeys Twitter's T&C. 🙉

Requirements

• Python 2.5 to 2.7 (the python-twitter module isn't fully Python 3 ready yet)
• The python-twitter module which has its own dependencies:
  • SimpleJson, Requests OAuthlib, HTTPLib2, Requests
• If you wish to use the provided runner.py script, you'll also need PyYAML.
• If you don't already have one, you'll need to setup your twitter developer account.
  • Sign into the developer apps dashboard with the bot's twitter account.
  • Create a new 'Application'. Under the Settings tab, make sure the Application Type is 'Read and Write'.
  • Back in the Details tab, click the Create My Access Token button. You'll need the values on this page for your configuration (below).

Usage

	from coolfoursquarebro import CoolFoursquareBro

    conf = {
        # [required] taken from your twitter developer app page
        'twitter_consumer_key': 'abcde12345abcde12345',
        'twitter_consumer_secret': 'abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345',
        'twitter_access_token': 'abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345',
        'twitter_access_token_secret': 'abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345abcde123',

        # [required] stores the last seen tweet info (created on first run)
        'db': '/tmp/file.db',

        # [required] the victim's twitter id (use http://gettwitterid.com/ to look up)
        'target_userid': 12345678,

        # [optional] useful for first run/testing, prevents responses to tweets older than this id
        # 'lastseen_startval': 0,

        # [optional] default response text text
        'coolstory_responsedefault': 'cool story, bro',

        # [optional] if the tweet text contains one of these keys, the value will be used instead
        'coolstory_responses': {
            'McDonald\'s': 'cool diet, bro',
            'deli': 'cool sandwich, bro'
        }
    }

	
    bot = CoolFoursquareBro(conf)
	 	
    bot.cool_story_bro()  # dry_run=True for testing 
}

Scheduling the Bot

While the above could be shoved in a while/sleep loop, I also wrote runner.py to run the bot from a cron job, reading the config from a file and doing appropriate logging.

Here's a sample cron entry to run the bot every 2 minutes (watch out for Twitter's rate limiting rules!):

*/2 * * * * /usr/bin/python /path/to/runner.py >> /path/to/runner.log 2>&1

It will look for a file called coolfoursquarebro.yaml in your home directory, but you may override that with the -c /path/to/config.yaml argument. The configuration is the same as the hardcoded dictionary in the above code snippet, except that it's in yaml format:

# [required] taken from your twitter developer app page
twitter_consumer_key: abcde12345abcde12345
twitter_consumer_secret: abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345
twitter_access_token: abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345
twitter_access_token_secret: abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345abcde12345abcde123

# [required] stores the last seen tweet info (created on first run)
db: /tmp/file.db

# [required] the victim's twitter id (use http://gettwitterid.com/ to look up)
target_userid: 12345678

# [optional] useful on the first run, prevents responses to tweets older than this id
# lastseen_startval: 0

# [optional] default response text text
coolstory_responsedefault: cool story, bro

# [optional] if the tweet text contains one of these keys, the value will be used instead
coolstory_responses:
  McDonald's: cool diet, bro
  deli: cool sandwich, bro

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the 'License');
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an 'AS IS' BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.