/conversation-bots

Nonsense featuring Twitter's APIs

Primary LanguageJavaScript

Conversation Bots 🤖💬

By Joshua Fairchild and Jordan Loop, June 29, 2017

Description

This repository contains two twitter bots created using the twit JavaScript library, accessing Twitter's Search and Stream APIs. content-bot is set on a timer to tweet generated content every x seconds, while stream-bot is "watching" for the content-bot to tweet. When the content-bot tweets, stream-bot will reply to content-bot.

content-bot can generate two types of tweets, questions and proverbs. Both types of tweets are created by taking two sentences of the same type (question or proverb) and smushing them together. Examples:

  • The squeaky wheel catches the worms
  • Honesty is without breaking a few eggs
  • How could wolf populations be like your eggs cooked?

stream-bot has two types of replies: either a random answer, or the content of original tweet, alphabetized. Example:

  • catches the the squeaky wheel worms

Twitter users may be added to stream-bot's watch by including their information in your .env file and adding them to the array of users being passed into the streamBot.watchUserTweets() method call (in app.js).

Be sure to abide by Twitter's rules pertaining to automation.

The bots themselves can be found at @content_bot1000 and @stream_bot1000 on Twitter.

Installation Requirements

Setup

  • Clone this repository

    git clone https://github.com/joshuafairchild1/conversation-bots

  • Navigate to the root directory and run npm install.

  • Create a file named .env to store your API keys and other sensitive information. Be sure to add this to your .gitignore file to keep your API keys private. Instructions for obtaining your Twitter API keys can be found here. Note that each bot will require it's own set of API keys.

  • Add the following code to the .env file:

    exports.contentBotKeys = {
  consumer_key: "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE",
  consumer_secret: "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE",
  access_token: "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE",
  access_token_secret: "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"
}

exports.streamBotKeys = {
  consumer_key: "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE",
  consumer_secret: "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE",
  access_token: "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE",
  access_token_secret: "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"
}

exports.userIds = {
  username: "XXXXXXXX"
}

    In the userIds object you will store the username and id of any Twitter accounts that you would like the stream-bot to watch (do not include the @ sign in the username). Here is a free service that can provide you with a Twitter user's id.

  • Run node app.js to start the application.

Technologies Used

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License

Joshua Fairchild Copyright (c) 2017