Tweet from Command Line with t

By  on  

Tweet from Command Line

I've been obsessed with command line magic lately, as you may have noticed.  I don't plan on using every utility I've written about but I'm having fun learning about what's out there and how it's done.  My latest quandary was how one could tweet and perform other Twitter-centric tasks from the command line.  I found my answer:  t.

The t project README perfectly describes the process for installing t and the process you must follow to allow the app access to your account.  In short, you must create a Twitter app, provide t the proper API auth tokens, and enable the app within your account.  t is so well written, however, that it tells you exactly what to do and opens the necessary URLs in your browser.  t is an incredible utility.

The t project README also provides a host of command line instructions for tweeting, managing lists, etc.  Here are a few frequently used commands:

# Set the "active" account
t set active davidwalshblog

# Send a tweet
t update 'This is my epic command line tweet!' 
# >> Tweet posted by @davidwalshblog.  Run `t delete status 595038201179312128` to delete.

# Get user information
t whois davidwalsh

# Follow a user
t follow davidwalsh

# Get your timeline
t timeline

# Get your timeline listing with IDs, then get stats about a tweet
t timeline -l
t status {id}

# Get recent mentions
t mentions

# Get recent mentions with their ID so you can reply back
t mentions -l 
t reply {id} {message}

The commands I've shown above are just the tip of the iceberg.  t has loads of more advanced functionality available, and since all I/O is done via command line, you can use your other favorite command line utilities evaluate results, as shown here:

# Output the last 200 tweets in your timeline to a CSV file
t timeline -n 200 --csv > timeline.csv

I was up and running within t 5 minutes, despite needing to go through Twitter's API hoops.  And t is amazingly simple but very powerful, so I look forward to using it more in the future.  Kudos to its author and I look forward to seeing where this project goes!

Recent Features

  • By
    How to Create a Twitter Card

    One of my favorite social APIs was the Open Graph API adopted by Facebook.  Adding just a few META tags to each page allowed links to my article to be styled and presented the way I wanted them to, giving me a bit of control...

  • By
    CSS vs. JS Animation: Which is Faster?

    How is it possible that JavaScript-based animation has secretly always been as fast — or faster — than CSS transitions? And, how is it possible that Adobe and Google consistently release media-rich mobile sites that rival the performance of native apps? This article serves as a point-by-point...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Telephone Link Protocol

    We've always been able to create links with protocols other than the usual HTTP, like mailto, skype, irc ,and more;  they're an excellent convenience to visitors.  With mobile phone browsers having become infinitely more usable, we can now extend that convenience to phone numbers: The tel...

  • By
    MooTools Overlay Plugin

    Overlays have become a big part of modern websites; we can probably attribute that to the numerous lightboxes that use them. I've found a ton of overlay code snippets out there but none of them satisfy my taste in code. Many of them are...

Discussion

  1. This is great, thanks for the share. I also can’t wait to see where this project goes!

  2. Ryan

    I’ve always wanted to Tweet in the terminal, so this is great

    All I need now is a Googling terminal utility and I’ll be set.

  3. Alessandro Belloni

    how can i “t update” with an image?

  4. Can i post a tweet with image?

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!