spritzbot

Twitter bot framework that uses streaming API and is simple to extend.

Setting up

Create a virtual environment, install requirements.

$ virtualenv --distribute --no-site-packages venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv)$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Edit credentials.sh and put in your details from dev.twitter.com, then $ source credentials.sh

Finally run $ python spritzbot.py

Tutorial

Create a new file in 'extensions' directory, call it hello.py, Create a function named process_mention that expects status and settings as arguments.

def process_mention(status, settings):
    if status.text.lower() == ('@%s hello' % settings.username):
        return dict(response='Hello, world!')
    else:
        return None

This will automatically respond to the user who mentioned you.

You can use post='Hello, world!' instead of response='Hello, world!' to send a tweet out to your timeline.

dm='Hello, world!' will send a direct message.

follow=True will follow the user, similarly: unfollow=True

You can use all the above options simultaneously in one response.

Create functions named process_dm, process_follow to process direct messages and follow-notifications.

Running on Heroku

Deploy to Heroku, setup the prerequisites and local workstation setup as laid out on: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/python

Run a heroku config:set command with all the environment variables in credentials.sh

Then skip over to deploy your app to heroku, finally issue heroku ps:scale bot=1. Do NOT scale to more than 1.

Now confirm we're up - check logs with heroku logs --tail

Finally, ask a friend to send you a @mention or a dm with just 'hello'.

Spritzbot does not have a web interface, so you will not see anything if you visit the app url.