# Twitter CLI [![Build Status](https://secure.travis-ci.org/sferik/t.png?branch=master)][travis] [![Dependency Status](https://gemnasium.com/sferik/t.png?travis)][gemnasium]
### A command-line power tool for Twitter.

The CLI attempts to mimic the [Twitter SMS commands][sms] wherever possible,
however it offers many more commands than are available via SMS.

[travis]: http://travis-ci.org/sferik/t
[gemnasium]: https://gemnasium.com/sferik/t
[gem]: https://rubygems.org/gems/twitter
[sms]: https://support.twitter.com/articles/14020-twitter-sms-command

## <a name="installation"></a>Installation
    gem install t

## <a name="configuration"></a>Configuration

Because Twitter requires OAuth for most of its functionality, you'll need to
register a new application at <http://dev.twitter.com/apps/new>. Once you
create your application make sure to set the "Application Type" to "Read, Write
and Access direct messages", otherwise you won't be able to post status updates
or send direct messages via the CLI.

Once you have registered your application, you'll be given a consumer key and
secret, which you can use to authorize your Twitter account.

    t authorize -c YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY -s YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET

This will open a new browser window where you can authenticate to Twitter and
then enter the returned PIN back into the terminal.  Assuming that works,
you'll be authorized to use the CLI.

You can see a list of all the accounts you've authorized.

    t accounts

    sferik
      UDfNTpOz5ZDG4a6w7dIWj
      uuP7Xbl2mEfGMiDu1uIyFN
    gem
      thG9EfWoADtIr6NjbL9ON (default)

Notice that one account is marked as the default. To change the default use the
`set` subcommand, passing either just the username, if it's unambiguous, or the
username and consumer key pair, like so:

    t set default sferik UDfNTpOz5ZDG4a6w7dIWj

Account information is stored in the YAML-formatted file `~/.trc`.

## <a name="examples"></a>Usage Examples
Typing `t help` will give you a list of all the available commands. You can
type `t help TASK` to get help for a specific command.

    t help

### <a name="update"></a>Update your status
    t update "I'm tweeting from the command line. Isn't that special?"

**Note**: If your tweet includes special characters (e.g. `!`), make sure to
wrap it in single quotes instead of double quotes, so those characters are not
interpreted by your shell.

### <a name="stats"></a>Retrieve stats about users
    t users -l @sferik @gem

### <a name="follow"></a>Follow users
    t follow @sferik @gem

### <a name="does-follow"></a>Does one user follow another user?
    t does_follow @ev @sferik

**Note**: When this command returns false, `t` exits with a non-zero exit code,
which which allows you to execute conditional commands, for example:

    t does_follow @ev @sferik && t dm @ev "What's up, bro?"

### <a name="friends"></a>List your friends (ordered by number of followers)
    t friends -lf

### <a name="leaders"></a>List your leaders (people you follow who don't follow you back)
    t leaders -lf

### <a name="unfollow"></a>Unfollow everyone you follow who doesn't follow you back
    t leaders | xargs t unfollow

### <a name="follow"></a>Follow back everyone who follows you
    t disciples | xargs t follow

### <a name="follow-roulette"></a>Follow roulette: randomly follow someone who follows you
    t disciples | shuf | head -1 | xargs t follow

### <a name="favorite"></a>Favorite the last 10 tweets that mention you
    t mentions -l -n 10 | awk '{print $1}' | xargs t favorite

### <a name="list-create"></a>Create a list
    t list create presidents

### <a name="list-add"></a>Add users to a list
    t list add presidents @BarackObama @Jasonfinn

### Create a list that contains today's date in the name
    t list create following-`date "+%Y-%m-%d"`

### <a name="followings"></a>Add everyone you're following to a list
    t followings | xargs t list add following-`date "+%Y-%m-%d"`

### <a name="list-members"></a>Display members of a list
    t list members following-`date "+%Y-%m-%d"`

### <a name="list-members-count"></a>Count the number of Twitter employees
    t list members twitter team | wc -l

### <a name="search-all"></a>Search Twitter for the 20 most recent Tweets that match a specified query
    t search all "query"

### <a name="search-retweets"></a>Search Tweets you've favorited that match a specified query
    t search favorites "query"

### <a name="search-mentions"></a>Search Tweets mentioning you that match a specified query
    t search mentions "query"

### <a name="search-retweets"></a>Search Tweets you've retweeted that match a specified query
    t search retweets "query"

### <a name="search-timeline"></a>Search Tweets in your timeline that match a specified query
    t search timeline "query"

### <a name="search-user"></a>Search Tweets in a user's timeline that match a specified query
    t search user @sferik "query"

## <a name="features"></a>Features
* Multithreaded: Whenever possible, Twitter API requests are made in parallel,
  resulting in faster performance for bulk operations.
* Designed for Unix: All output is designed to be piped to other Unix
  utilities, like grep, cut, awk, bc, wc, and xargs for advanced processing.
* 99% C0 Code Coverage: Extremely well tested, with a 3:1 test-to-code ratio.
* Generate spreadsheets: Output any command in CSV format simply by adding the
  `--csv` flag.

## <a name="terminology"></a>Relationship Terminology

There is some ambiguity in the terminology used to describe relationships on
Twitter. For example, some people use the term "friends" to mean the set of
everyone you follow, while we use it to mean just the subset of people who
follow you back (i.e., friendship is bidirectional). Here is the full table of
terminology used throughout `t`:

                               ___________________________________________________
                              |                         |                         |
                              |     YOU FOLLOW THEM     |  YOU DON'T FOLLOW THEM  |
     _________________________|_________________________|_________________________|_________________________
    |                         |                         |                         |                         |
    |     THEY FOLLOW YOU     |         friends         |        disciples        |        followers        |
    |_________________________|_________________________|_________________________|_________________________|
    |                         |                         |
    |  THEY DON'T FOLLOW YOU  |         leaders         |
    |_________________________|_________________________|
                              |                         |
                              |       followings        |
                              |_________________________|

## <a name="history"></a>History
![History](http://twitter.rubyforge.org/images/terminal_output.png "History")

The [twitter gem][gem] previously contained a command-line interface, up until
version 0.5.0, when it was [removed][]. This project is offered as a sucessor
to that effort, however it is a clean room implementation that contains none of
John Nunemaker's original code.

[removed]: https://github.com/jnunemaker/twitter/commit/dd2445e3e2c97f38b28a3f32ea902536b3897adf

## <a name="contributing"></a>Contributing
In the spirit of [free software][fsf], **everyone** is encouraged to help
improve this project.

[fsf]: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html

Here are some ways *you* can contribute:

* by using alpha, beta, and prerelease versions
* by reporting bugs
* by suggesting new features
* by writing or editing documentation
* by writing specifications
* by writing code (**no patch is too small**: fix typos, add comments, clean up
  inconsistent whitespace)
* by refactoring code
* by closing [issues][]
* by reviewing patches

[issues]: https://github.com/sferik/t/issues

## <a name="issues"></a>Submitting an Issue
We use the [GitHub issue tracker][issues] to track bugs and features. Before
submitting a bug report or feature request, check to make sure it hasn't
already been submitted. You can indicate support for an existing issue by
voting it up. When submitting a bug report, please include a [Gist][] that
includes a stack trace and any details that may be necessary to reproduce the
bug, including your gem version, Ruby version, and operating system. Ideally, a
bug report should include a pull request with failing specs.

[gist]: https://gist.github.com/

## <a name="pulls"></a>Submitting a Pull Request
1. Fork the project.
2. Create a topic branch.
3. Implement your feature or bug fix.
4. Add specs for your feature or bug fix.
5. Run `bundle exec rake spec`. If your changes are not 100% covered, go back
   to step 4.
6. Commit and push your changes.
7. Submit a pull request. Please do not include changes to the gemspec,
   version, or history file. (If you want to create your own version for some
   reason, please do so in a separate commit.)

## <a name="versions"></a>Supported Ruby Versions
This library aims to support and is [tested against][travis] the following Ruby
implementations:

* Ruby 1.8.7
* Ruby 1.9.2
* Ruby 1.9.3
* [Rubinius][]

[rubinius]: http://rubini.us/

If something doesn't work on one of these interpreters, it should be considered
a bug.

This library may inadvertently work (or seem to work) on other Ruby
implementations, however support will only be provided for the versions listed
above.

If you would like this library to support another Ruby version, you may
volunteer to be a maintainer. Being a maintainer entails making sure all tests
run and pass on that implementation. When something breaks on your
implementation, you will be personally responsible for providing patches in a
timely fashion. If critical issues for a particular implementation exist at the
time of a major release, support for that Ruby version may be dropped.

## <a name="copyright"></a>Copyright
Copyright (c) 2011 Erik Michaels-Ober. See [LICENSE][] for details.

[license]: https://github.com/sferik/t/blob/master/LICENSE.md