15.5: Scheduling Tweets Using setInterval() - Twitter Bot Tutorial

In this video how you can use

the setInterval() function

to schedule tweets from a bot in node

we already have working from

the previous video an example

that makes a status ,post to the twitter

api and a callback to tell us whether

it did'nt work or work

So now we need to do this

what if I want this particular program

to do this every five minutes or

once an hour

how would I add that to the program

other thing I will show you in this video

is how you can have a bot tweet based on

a particular event

So, the example I am using in this vedio

is anytime someone follows me I will tweet

back and say like you know thank you

for following me or something like

that. There are lot of other kinds of

events, eventually at some point I wanna

look if someone tweets mentions me

with an image I'm gonna process that image

send the image back but,

we get to that in future vedios

In this one we are gonna look at

scheduling the tweets and the twitter api

stream to have tweets happen based on

a given event. Okay

So,the good news is

we already have this,this is all

the code that I need

for posting a tweet

tweeting a tweet.Okay

The first thing I'm gonna do

wrap this in a function and

I am gonna call this function

'tweetIt' apparently everything has to

start with 'tw' in this example. So, I'm

gonna all of this code and

I am going to indent this a little bit

I don't have my sublime settings,

this four space indent I can't

I have to tolerate this for the video

probably gonna fix that for the future

two spaces two spaces Iprefer

but you shouldn't be like that

you should welcome any kind of spaces

for your indentation

But the point is I have this now inner

function so anytime I would have

call this function

If I call that function boom its gonna

post that tweet. One thing I have

an issue of like could run this right now

I am gonna say 'node bot2.js' I'm feeling

I might get an error

'Something went wrong'. So, why it send

something went wrong is just run this

example I made the same exact

tweet two times in a row

so twitter doesn't like that

twitter is like that's a duplicate status

I could have got better error message

down here to look at the error what the

error actually is,but I have done this

before so I remember I have done this

before I know that was an error

It doesn't make sense to have twitter bot

to post the same tweet every so often.

There is actually a page twitter's website

I will provide a link to it that gives

you kind of rules that you should follow

bots are allowed but there are certain

kinds of do's and don't 's in terms of

what Twitter allows for your bot but

one thing that I can do really quickly is

I could just say let's make this a

'Random Number Bot'

So I could say in my tweetIt function

I can say 'var r' is a random number

between 0 and 100 and may be I'm gonna

use floor function so it doesn't have

a decimal point. So I'm getting 0 5

integer or whole number

I tweet I could say the status is a

'here is random number' plus r plus

'codingrainbow from node js'

Hopefully that not more than 140 character

I think that's fine. So now atleast

each tweet would be different because

I am getting a random number.

So, let's run this again

and see 'It Worked!' and

now if go to the browser and

look at my account page Refresh

see 'here is random number 30'

forgot to put a space between the number

and the hash symbol. So, my super

important hashtag is gone. So, let me add

that space back in and you can see

there we go, this is a bot a bot that

tweets a random number I mean the point

of me making these videos is that

to show how to do it so it's up to you

how you come up with bunch of creative

or interesting ideas and I try to include

some links to interesting bots examples

and ideas might help you guys started

in this video description but the real

key here for now is this now happening

just once what if I want this happen every

so often the way I can do that

is by using the function in Javascript

called 'setInterval()' and it is a

function that triggers this particular

function 'tweetIt' every how some number

of milliseconds. So what I could say is a

1000 milliseconds would be 1 sec.

1000 times 10 would be 10seconds

1000 times 60 would be 60 seconds

minute times 5 would be 5 minutes

times 60 would be once in hour.

It's up to you how often you want your

bot to run again read that Twitter page

that explains that like if you are posting

tweets like every 10 ms, probably gonna

shutdown your account .I imagine I don't

know all the parameter all of them top

in my head but all purpose is right now

if we get away with like tweeting every

20 seconds just briefly so we can at

least see the response and one thing

I also do is actually when my bot starts

explicitly called tweetIt once because

this first time it's gonna run is only

20 seconds in. So I have to think

of something for 20 seconds while

we are waiting but let's run the bot

and say 'node bot.js' so it worked

it did tweet something probably would

make sense do something better in console

like print out the tweet that I actually

tweeted. I'm rambling

This probably gonna take me 20 seconds

to go back over here refresh this page

and you can see got the number 18

from node.js and now I'm gonna go back

to node and wait here ' It worked!'

and another one that was 20 seconds

come back here and hit refresh

and look I got the number 72 now

I'm gonna quickly go here and

hit 'Ctrl + c' which is gonna stop

this thing from running and I don't wanna

tweet too often from this account

right now but you can see this is it

all of these videos all of this like

this setting up an account working

with node it boils down to actually

really quite easy which is just about

having a single function that posts a

tweet and single function 'setInterval()'

schedules it. Of course the real work

for you is what goes here like why you are

making a bot Is it to be try some playful

experience Is it to do something practical

Is it to make a political statement or to

provoke some thought there are lots of

different kinds of creative reasons why

you might want to make a bot. I think it's

kind of form of expression that is really

I am so tired of making these videos for

hours. I'm excited to see those who you

are may be the first time what kind

of things you might make please share

those if you end up making something

in the comments that would be helpful

and interesting to me. So ,now let's look

at one more aspect of this

If you remember that these are the three

kinds of thing that you can do with

Twitter API you can search the Twitter API

So one of the things you might do is like

search for all the tweets with the given

term and I could make up a tweet from

those tweets and send them back

with post. But, the thing we haven't seen

is this ' stream ' so how do you set up

a stream. So, first of all, there are

couple of things there are different

kind of streams and the stream I'm gonna

demonstrate you is the stream called

' user ' stream the reason why I wanna

setup a user stream is I want to get an

event for certain kind of actions

If someone favourite one of my tweets

if someone follows me, If someone

retweets me, someone ' @ ' replies me

So you can get an event. Let's start with

just the follow event which is one of the

easier ones to work with. Now

I don't have actually code for this

of the top of my head I'm gonna just kind

of grab it from a here for a second

which I prefer to like to type it out but

just gonna do this from my previous

example. So, I'm gonna leave this down

here this particular interval is gonna go

as well I am gonna add something to this

particular bot. So, I'm gonna add these

2 particular lines to the code

Setup a stream a user stream remember

T is a reference to my connection to the

API with twit package