[twitter-api-announce] Announcing Twurl: OAuth-enabled curl for the Twitter API

[Marcel Molina]

We've announced that come June 2010, Basic Auth will no longer be supported via the Twitter API. All authenticated requests will be moving to OAuth (either version 1.0a or the emerging 2.0 spec). There are many benefits from this change. Aside from the obvious security improvements, having all requests be signed with OAuth gives us far better visibility into our traffic and allows us many more tools for controlling and limiting abuse. When we know and trust the origin of our traffic we can loosen the reigns a lot and trust by default. We've already made a move in this direction by automatically increasing rate limits for requests signed with OAuth made to the new versioned api.twitter.com host.

One of the often cited virtues of the Twitter API is its simplicity. All you have to do to poke around at the API is curl, for example, http://api.twitter.com/1/users/noradio.xml and you're off and running. When you require that OAuth be added to the mix, you risk losing the simplicity and low barrier to entry that curl affords you. We want to preserve this simplicity. So we've provided two tools to let you poke around at the API without having to fuss with all the extraneous details of OAuth. For those who want the ease of the web, we've already included an API console in our new developer portal at http://dev.twitter.com/console. And now today we're glad to make available the Twurl command line utility as open source software:

  http://github.com/marcel/twurl

If you already have RubyGems (http://rubygems.org/), you can install it with the gem command:

  sudo gem i twurl --source http://rubygems.org

If you don't have RubyGems but you have Rake (http://rake.rubyforge.org/), you can install it "from source". Check out the INSTALL file (http://github.com/marcel/twurl/blob/master/INSTALL).

Once you've got it installed, start off by checking out the README (http://github.com/marcel/twurl/blob/master/README) (you can always get the README by running 'twurl -T'):

+-------+

| Twurl |

+-------+

Twurl is like curl, but tailored specifically for the Twitter API.

It knows how to grant an access token to a client application for

a specified user and then sign all requests with that access token.

It also provides other development and debugging conveniences such

as defining aliases for common requests, as well as support for

multiple access tokens to easily switch between different client

applications and Twitter accounts.

+-----------------+

| Getting Started |

+-----------------+

The first thing you have to do is register an OAuth application

to get a consumer key and secret.

  http://dev.twitter.com/apps/new

When you have your consumer key and its secret you authorize

your Twitter account to make API requests with your consumer key

and secret.

  % twurl authorize --consumer-key the_key       \

                    --consumer-secret the_secret

This will return an URL that you should open up in your browser.

Authenticate to Twitter, and then enter the returned PIN back into

the terminal.  Assuming all that works well, you will beauthorized

to make requests with the API. Twurl will tell you as much.

If your consumer application has xAuth enabled, then you can use

a variant of the above

  % twurl authorize -u username -p password      \

                    --consumer-key the_key       \

                    --consumer-secret the_secret

And, again assuming your username, password, key and secret is

correct, will authorize you in one step.

+-----------------+

| Making Requests |

+-----------------+

The simplest request just requires that you specify the path you

want to request.

  % twurl /1/statuses/home_timeline.xml

Similar to curl, a GET request is performed by default.

You can implicitly perform a POST request by passing the -d option,

which specifies POST parameters.

  % twurl -d 'status=Testing twurl' /1/statuses/update.xml

You can explicitly specify what request method to perform with

the -X (or --request-method) option.

  % twurl -X DELETE /1/statuses/destroy/123456.xml

+------------------+

| Creating aliases |

+------------------+

  % twurl alias h /1/statuses/home_timeline.xml

You can then use "h" in place of the full path.

  % twurl h

Paths that require additional options such as request parameters for example can

be used with aliases the same as with full explicit paths, just as you might

expect.

  % twurl alias tweet /1/statuses/update.xml

  % twurl tweet -d "status=Aliases in twurl are convenient"

+-------------------------------+

| Changing your default profile |

+-------------------------------+

The first time you authorize a client application to make requests on behalf of your account, twurl stores your access token information in its .twurlrc file. Subsequent requests will use this profile as the default profile. You can use the 'accounts' subcommand to see what client applications have been authorized for what user names:

  % twurl accounts

  noradio

    HQsAGcBm5MQT4n6j7qVJw

    hhC7Koy2zRsTZvQh1hVlSA (default)

  testiverse

    guT9RsJbNQgVe6AwoY9BA

Notice that one of those consumer keys is marked as the default. To change the default use the 'set' subcommand, passing then either just the username, if it's unambiguous, or the username and consumer key pair if it isn't unambiguous:

  % twurl set default testiverse

  % twurl accounts

  noradio

    HQsAGcBm5MQT4n6j7qVJw

    hhC7Koy2zRsTZvQh1hVlSA

  testiverse

    guT9RsJbNQgVe6AwoY9BA (default)

  % twurl set default noradio HQsAGcBm5MQT4n6j7qVJw

  % twurl accounts

  noradio

    HQsAGcBm5MQT4n6j7qVJw (default)

    hhC7Koy2zRsTZvQh1hVlSA

  testiverse

    guT9RsJbNQgVe6AwoY9BA

+--------------+

| Contributors |

+--------------+

Marcel Molina <mar...@twitter.com> / @noradio

Raffi Krikorian <ra...@twitter.com> / @raffi

--
Marcel Molina
Twitter Platform Team
http://twitter.com/noradio

--
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