How to create a simple Twitter bot
How to create a simple Twitter bot
Bot 101 from the bloke who made @yokoonobot and @fesshole
People often ask me how to get started on writing bots and generally I give them two answers depending on how technical they are.
The first, least nuts and bolts answer, is to use this service:
https://cheapbotsdonequick.com/
Cheap Bots Done Quick will allow you to create a simple bot like @yokoonobot, without getting your fingers dirty with code. The level of knowledge you need is being able to follow instructions on their website and being comfortable editing lists of phrases and words.
CBDQ an excellent service and it’s definitely what you should use if you’re not a coder and/or mostly interested the messing with language possibilities of bots.
However, it’s not the technology I use for bots. I hand-code bots like some 18th century blacksmith - this is because it gives me more control and more options.
So the question is, how do I build this type of bot?
Well, shit, this is going to take a lot of typing and I’m not sure I can be arsed to type every damn detail, so I’ll try and give an overview in Q&A format and hopefully you, if you’re a bit techy, can fill in the blanks yourself.
What language should I use? PYTHON
Now telling people to use one programming language over another always winds people up, however what’s amazing about Python is all the libraries people have written to do stuff with it. Whatever you want to do, you can probably build it gluing some libraries together. Someone has already done 90% of the work for you and the rest of it is slotting Lego together.
Where should I host it? Use AWS
Right there’s two options really for running bots - from your home computer or on a server somewhere. AWS is as good as anyway. Yes this is “the cloud” AKA a server somewhere.
To be fair for your first bot you’ll probably be ok running it from your home computer, I just personally got fed up with my fan spinning up in the middle of the night and decided to make that someone else’s problem.
How do I install Python?
Well one of the things I like about Python is that it’s already installed on Macs. Open a terminal window, type ‘python’ and you’re already there. Perfect.
In you’re using Windows then here’s some instructions.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kVE07_QtfzdWhXsCJxkOFePSXHQ4hca710XLnlKkcns/edit?usp=sharing
Can you just write a tutorial?
OK first you need to know how to do a hello world:
print "Hello World"
save this out as a text file called bot1.py and you can exectute it on the command line line as
python bot1.py
Great. Now you need to know how to shuffle language a bit
import random
world=["Kate Bush","Wolverhampton", "England", "London", "Internet", "Wankers"]
print "Hello %s" % (random.choice(world))
That’s going to print a random word. Cool huh?
Now you need to know how to make that into a phrase:
import random
hello=["Hello","Greetings","Hi","Yo","Hiya","Hullo","Bonjour"]
world=["Kate Bush","Wolverhampton", "England", "London", "Internet", "Wankers"]
print "%s %s" % (random.choice(hello),random.choice(world))
Now you need to know how to tweet it. You’re going to have to register a twitter account as a dev account and get all the API Key stuff.
You’re going to have to install tweepy - a library that talks to twitter from python
pip install tweepy
and now all this bollocks here will allow you to tweet it via code:
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import tweepy, random
def getApiKey():
apikey={
"tck" : "copy API from dev twitter",
"tcs" : "copy API from dev twitter",
"tat" : "copy API from dev twitter",
"tas" : "copy API from dev twitter"}
return (apikey)
def openTwitter():
apikey=getApiKey()
auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(apikey['tck'], apikey['tcs'])
auth.set_access_token(apikey['tat'],apikey['tas'])
api = tweepy.API(auth)
return api
hello=["Hello","Greetings","Hi","Yo","Hiya","Hullo","Bonjour"]
world=["Kate Bush","Wolverhampton", "England", "London", "Internet", "Wankers"]
tweet="%s %s" % (random.choice(hello),random.choice(world))
api = openTwitter()
api.update_status(tweet)
Right now the only bit missing that makes it a bot is making it happen automatically by sticking it in a cronjob.
on the command line something like
crontab -e
that’ll let you edit it
then add the line
0 * * * * python $HOME/python/bot1.py
to make it execute every hour
OK YOU HAVE NOW BUILT A SIMPLE BOT. If this is confusing then you could always get in my DMs and I’ll do a zoom session with you for a non crazy price and we’ll build a bot together.