ZenTwitter

ZenTwitter is a small script I wrote to be able to update my twitter account without the need of having a browser window open all the time. It uses zenity and curl.

Installation

Just dump it into your ~/bin directory, open it in the editor of your choice to change the username/password, make it executable (chmod a+x) and add a launcher icon to the panel/menu/desktop of your preferred window manager.

Download: ZenTwitter.tgz

Screenshots

Source

#!/bin/bash
# @author Michael Klier <chi@chimeric.de>
# @www    http://www.chimeric.de/pojects/ZenTwitter
 
# trivial twitter status update client
 
# set username/password
USER="username"
PASS="password"
 
# main script
URL="https://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml"
ZENITY=/usr/bin/zenity
CURL=/usr/bin/curl
 
# check if zenity is installed
if [[ ! -x $ZENITY ]];
then
    echo "ERROR: Zenity is missing!"
    exit 1
fi
 
# check if curl is installed
if [[ ! -x $CURL ]];
then
    $ZENITY --error --text="ERROR: curl is missing" --title="ZenTwitter"
    exit 1
fi
 
# get tweet
tweet=$(${ZENITY} --entry --text="Gimme your tweet:" --title="ZenTwitter")
 
if [[ "$?" == 1 ]];
then
    exit 0
fi
 
while [[ $(echo "${tweet}" | tr -d ' ') == "" ]];
do
    tweet=$(${ZENITY} --entry --text="D'oh! You entered nothing! Try again or cancel:" --title="ZenTwitter")
    if [[ "$?" == 1 ]];
    then
        exit 0
    fi
done
 
# update status
$CURL -u ${USER}:${PASS} -d status="${tweet}" ${URL} -k
 
if [[ "$?" == 0 ]];
then
    $ZENITY --info --text="Updated successful!" --title="ZenTwitter"
    exit 0
else
    $ZENITY --error --text="Something went wrong!\nRun ZenTwitter.sh from a commandline for more information!" --title="ZenTwitter"
    exit 1
fi

Resources

zenity
curl

Tags:

Comments

1

Hi

It's very good but have some error. I replaced ]] with ] and [[ with [[ and == with = It's work correctly. Thanks for scripts.

Saeid Zebardast

2007/12/16 07:32

2

It should work with [[ and it should be faster than simple testing BashCuresCancer.com

JayPiKay

2008/03/20 22:19

3

Neat and extremely convenient script! Nice work!

Thomas Tvivlaren

2008/03/27 21:05

4

I needed to modify the interpreter to #!/bin/bash in Ubuntu because I was getting the same double bracket errors as Saeid - at least I think that's what was happening.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DashAsBinSh

Otherwise, works great. Great job.

Wayne

2008/04/01 02:18

5

Aaaah, hmmm, seems I've missed to change that in the tarball (I've changed that in the source code listing on this site a while ago). Thanks for the hint :-) !

Michael Klier

2008/04/01 10:35

6

Here is the code I use, very similar, except that it checks the length. Twitter doesn't allow “twits” longer than 140 characters.

You'll need to export/define your username/password as well.

if [ $# != 0 ]; then
        export status="$*";
fi
 
if [ $# = 0 ]; then
        export status="`zenity --entry --title \"Twitter\" --text \"What are you doing?\"`"
fi
 
export count=`echo "$status" | wc -m`;
 
echo $count;
 
if [ $count -gt 140 ]; then
        zenity --error --title "Twitter" --text "Your status was over 140 characters."
        exit;
fi
 
if [ -z "$status" ]; then
        zenity --error --title "Twitter" --text "Your status wasn't changed."
        exit;
else
        curl -u $username:$password -d status="$status" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml
        zenity --info --title "Twitter" --text "Your status was updated to \"$status\""
fi