Category: PHP

Setting Up Twitter Bots with OAuth

Post author By masnun
Post date April 30, 2010
51 Comments on Setting Up Twitter Bots with OAuth

Twitter has decided to kill Basic Authentication on the Twitter API from June 30. They have setup a nice website at http://www.countdowntooauth.com/ to let you all know and help you migrate your apps to use the OAuth 🙂

OAuth is cool. It’s safe and secure for the end user. It’s convenient for the developers as well. Basic Auth entirely depends on the username and password of the user. But if you wish to carry out an in-app transaction, then you’d have to seek the services from Fully-Verified to carry out a KYC verification.

The developer can do whatever s/he wishes with the user account as long as the user doesn’t change the password. On the other hand, if the user for some reason changes his/her password, the application will no longer be able to access the account and provide the desired service. OAuth helps both parties here! When the user authenticates an app via OAuth, it provides the developer with an access token ( a key and a secret ) which is by no way related to the user’s password. It’s unique for every user and application pair. That is every user will have an unique access token only for that application. Now even if the user changes the password, the access token will remain unchanged. The developer can safely store the token and use that to access the user’s account without hassle. Similarly, if the user wants to revoke the access permitted to an application, he or she can easily do that. In that case, the access token becomes invalid and the application loses access to that account.

In the Basic Auth age, it was very easy to develop twitter bots. You just setup the username and password into a configuration file, call the REST API with the login details and you’re done! Yeah, it was quite easy. But it’s not harder now 🙂 Don’t fret, OAuth is also very simple and easy to implement for twitter bots. While you need to go through a two phase OAuth dance to authorize other users, Twitter displays the access token of the developer directly into the dashboard! Thanks to Twitter for making things so plain for developers! With your own access token, you can authorize your apps directly without any further verification.

To get the access token, first go to : http://dev.twitter.com. Login if you’re not already logged in. Use the twitter ID you want to run as a bot. Go to http://dev.twitter.com/apps by clicking the “Your Apps” on top right corner. You will see a list of applications under the logged in twitter account. One big advantage of the basic auth was that you didn’t need to create applications. But now you need! Create an application if you don’t already have one created. In most cases you won’t have one since this is probably the first time you’re using OAuth. In that situation, please create an application. Note down the Consumer Key and Consumer Secret after visiting the application page by clicking on any of the application name. Now, on the right hand navigation bar, you’ll see “My Access Token”. Please visit that section and retrieve your Access Token and Access Token Secret. That’s all we needed. Now let’s do some coding to demonstrate the use of these keys and secrets.

We first need to get a Twitter Client library. If you’re already using one, just check to make sure that it has OAuth support. The work flow is simple. First construct the client with the consumer key and consumer secret. Then set the access token key and the access token secret. Now use the client to make Twitter API calls, in our case, to update statuses!

You can get the OAuth libraries from : http://dev.twitter.com/pages/oauth_libraries . But I recommend using Tweepy with Python and Abraham’s TwitterOAuth with PHP . They are not generic OAuth clients. They were built for Twitter and you don’t need to configure any extra parameters to make it work with Twitter.

Here’s the code samples on how to use the libraries to update status via OAuth.

PHP (Abraham’s TwitterOAuth)

<?php
$consumer_key = "";
$consumer_secret = "";
$access_key = "";
$access_secret = "";

require_once('twitteroauth/twitteroauth.php');

$connection = new TwitterOAuth ($consumer_key ,$consumer_secret , $access_key , $access_secret );

$connection->post('statuses/update', array('status' => "Hello Twitter OAuth!"));
?>

<?php

$consumer_key = "";

$consumer_secret = "";

$access_key = "";

$access_secret = "";

require_once('twitteroauth/twitteroauth.php');

$connection = new TwitterOAuth ($consumer_key ,$consumer_secret , $access_key , $access_secret );

$connection->post('statuses/update', array('status' => "Hello Twitter OAuth!"));

Python (Tweepy)

consumer_key = ""
consumer_secret = ""
access_token = ""
access_token_secret = ""

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)
bot = tweepy.API(auth)

bot.update_status("Hello Twitter OAuth!")

consumer_key = ""

consumer_secret = ""

access_token = ""

access_token_secret = ""

auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)

auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_token_secret)

bot = tweepy.API(auth)

bot.update_status("Hello Twitter OAuth!")

PHP

Using Gedit as a PHP IDE

I’ve been using Ubuntu 9.04 as my primary OS for a while now. I love the power and flexibility of this free and open source OS. Besides PHP, I code Python mainly. I use the Netbeans IDE for PHP and the built in Gedit editor for editing all other sorts of text files and scripts. I like the simplicity and lightweight nature of this editor. Netbeans IDE is very good for web application development. Specially, I have always enjoyed the project management features for easy management of my different projects. The main reason I have been using Netbeans is the Alt+Shift+F command. The formatting option that reformats my entire page with appropriate indentation and makes it readable. Yes, it is cool! But I hate the sluggishness of Netbeans. I know, this is the fault of the slow JVM. Also, when Netbeans lose the focus and regains later, I need to right click or interact with the GUI before I can start typing. This was pissing me off. So, I started using Gedit for quick fixes and hacks. I like the font of the editor, not to mention the cool color schemes. I was wondering if there were any plugins for Gedit to format php codes like Netbeans.

No, there is no dedicated plugin for that. But Gedit has the ability to use external tools to interact with the documents. I installed the php_beautifier pear package and used it with Gedit to partially achieve what I was looking for.

1) I downloaded the PHP_Beautifier package from PHP Pear (http://pear.php.net)
2) Installed it by typing:

cd Desktop
sudo pear install PHP_Beautifier-0.1.14.tgz

1 2	cd Desktop sudo pear install PHP_Beautifier-0.1.14.tgz

The pear package installed a command line utility “php_beautifier” which lets us beautify php codes.

3) Open Gedit. Go to: Edit > Preferences. Visit the “Plugins” tab and activate the External Tools command.

4) The plugin will enable you to let external commands help you process the document. Let’s build our php beautifier for Gedit.

5) Go to: Tools > External Tools. Click “New”. Fill up the form like below:
Description: PHP Beautifier
Shortcut Key:
Commands:

php_beautifier -l "Pear()"

1	php_beautifier -l "Pear()"

Input: Current Document
Output: Replace Current Document
Applicability: All documents.

You can click on the “New Tool” label to rename the tool. Let’s rename it to “PHP Beautify” and close the dialog box.

Now, we are ready to beautify our php codes from Gedit. Just type in some php codes. Go to: Tools > PHP Beautify and see the output. Please Save the document. You can’t edit the document unless you save after the processing.

PS: Please remember that, it beautifies php only. It will not be able to beautify inline html and php together. I am looking for some command line tool that can help me achieve that. And then, I will say goodbye to Netbeans and stick to Gedit 🙂

PHP

Power of PHP: Resizing Images on Command Line

Post author By masnun
Post date April 3, 2010
2 Comments on Power of PHP: Resizing Images on Command Line

I’m too busy to explain the script now. In short, it scans the current directory for all the JPG images and converts them into smaller image files hardly compromising the quality. I managed to convert a 211 MB album into a 5.8 MB collection with this script. Modify the $dir varible which holds the location of target directory. Make sure the target directory already exists. Also change the $percent inside the resize function to control the output quality.

Thanks to PHP for such powerful image processing. I just ran the following command on my Ubuntu terminal:

cd /var/www/photos
php img.php

1 2	cd /var/www/photos php img.php

I was done! Here’s the source code:

<?php
$dir = "/home/masnun/Desktop/photos/";

$files = glob("*.JPG");
echo count($files). " to process \n";
foreach( $files as $file ) {
        echo "Processing: {$file} ....";
        resize($file, $dir);
        echo " -- done \n";

        }

function resize($img, $dir) {
$new_loc = $dir.basename($img);
$percent = 30;
$constrain = "";
$w = "" ;
$h = "";

// get image size of img
$x = @getimagesize($img);
// image width
$sw = $x[0];
// image height
$sh = $x[1];

if ($percent > 0) {
	// calculate resized height and width if percent is defined
	$percent = $percent * 0.01;
	$w = $sw * $percent;
	$h = $sh * $percent;
} else {
	if (isset ($w) AND !isset ($h)) {
		// autocompute height if only width is set
		$h = (100 / ($sw / $w)) * .01;
		$h = @round ($sh * $h);
	} elseif (isset ($h) AND !isset ($w)) {
		// autocompute width if only height is set
		$w = (100 / ($sh / $h)) * .01;
		$w = @round ($sw * $w);
	} elseif (isset ($h) AND isset ($w) AND isset ($constrain)) {
		// get the smaller resulting image dimension if both height
		// and width are set and $constrain is also set
		$hx = (100 / ($sw / $w)) * .01;
		$hx = @round ($sh * $hx);

		$wx = (100 / ($sh / $h)) * .01;
		$wx = @round ($sw * $wx);

		if ($hx < $h) {
			$h = (100 / ($sw / $w)) * .01;
			$h = @round ($sh * $h);
		} else {
			$w = (100 / ($sh / $h)) * .01;
			$w = @round ($sw * $w);
		}
	}
}

$im = @ImageCreateFromJPEG ($img) or // Read JPEG Image
$im = @ImageCreateFromPNG ($img) or // or PNG Image
$im = @ImageCreateFromGIF ($img) or // or GIF Image
$im = false; // If image is not JPEG, PNG, or GIF

if (!$im) {
	// We get errors from PHP's ImageCreate functions...
	// So let's echo back the contents of the actual image.
	readfile ($img);
} else {
	// Create the resized image destination
	$thumb = @ImageCreateTrueColor ($w, $h);
	// Copy from image source, resize it, and paste to image destination
	@ImageCopyResampled ($thumb, $im, 0, 0, 0, 0, $w, $h, $sw, $sh);
	// Output resized image
	@ImageJPEG ($thumb, $new_loc);
}
}
?>

<?php

$dir = "/home/masnun/Desktop/photos/";

$files = glob("*.JPG");

echo count($files). " to process \n";

foreach( $files as $file ) {

echo "Processing: {$file} ....";

resize($file, $dir);

echo " -- done \n";

}

function resize($img, $dir) {

$new_loc = $dir.basename($img);

$percent = 30;

$constrain = "";

$w = "" ;

$h = "";

// get image size of img

$x = @getimagesize($img);

// image width

$sw = $x[0];

// image height

$sh = $x[1];

if ($percent > 0) {

// calculate resized height and width if percent is defined

$percent = $percent * 0.01;

$w = $sw * $percent;

$h = $sh * $percent;

} else {

if (isset ($w) AND !isset ($h)) {

// autocompute height if only width is set

$h = (100 / ($sw / $w)) * .01;

$h = @round ($sh * $h);

} elseif (isset ($h) AND !isset ($w)) {

// autocompute width if only height is set

$w = (100 / ($sh / $h)) * .01;

$w = @round ($sw * $w);

} elseif (isset ($h) AND isset ($w) AND isset ($constrain)) {

// get the smaller resulting image dimension if both height

// and width are set and $constrain is also set

$hx = (100 / ($sw / $w)) * .01;

$hx = @round ($sh * $hx);

$wx = (100 / ($sh / $h)) * .01;

$wx = @round ($sw * $wx);

if ($hx < $h) {

$h = (100 / ($sw / $w)) * .01;

$h = @round ($sh * $h);

} else {

$w = (100 / ($sh / $h)) * .01;

$w = @round ($sw * $w);

}

$im = @ImageCreateFromJPEG ($img) or // Read JPEG Image

$im = @ImageCreateFromPNG ($img) or // or PNG Image

$im = @ImageCreateFromGIF ($img) or // or GIF Image

$im = false; // If image is not JPEG, PNG, or GIF

if (!$im) {

// We get errors from PHP's ImageCreate functions...

// So let's echo back the contents of the actual image.

readfile ($img);

} else {

// Create the resized image destination

$thumb = @ImageCreateTrueColor ($w, $h);

// Copy from image source, resize it, and paste to image destination

@ImageCopyResampled ($thumb, $im, 0, 0, 0, 0, $w, $h, $sw, $sh);

// Output resized image

@ImageJPEG ($thumb, $new_loc);

}

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