A recent tweet from Tim Bray contained a link to an article explaining how to tweet from the command line. That prompted me to write a quick script to make tweeting from the command line a bit easier. You can can download the script: tweet. You can grab it from GitHub:
You can see the script below:
# Author: Miles Z. Sterrett <miles -dot- sterrett AT gmail -dot- com>
# Created: 03-29-08
# Updated: 03-29-08
# Sends an update to Twitter
# Uncomment and enter your own Twitter info
# to avoid having to use the command line parameters
#USER=username
#PASS=password
function force_response {
message=$1
local answer=
read -e -p "$message" answer
while [ -z $answer ]; do
echo "You must enter a value to continue..."
read -e -p "$message" answer
done
eval $2=$answer
}
while getopts "u:p:hm:" OPTION
do
case $OPTION in
u)
USER=$OPTARG
;;
p)
PASS=$OPTARG
;;
h)
usage
exit 1
;;
m)
MESSAGE=$OPTARG
;;
?)
usage
exit
;;
esac
done
shift $(($OPTIND -1))
MESSAGE=$1
function usage {
cat <<EOF
Usage: $0 [-h] [-d DOMAIN] [-e EMAIL] [-u USER]
This script will post a message to Twitter
-h This usage information.
-m Your message
-p PASS Twitter password
-u USER Twitter user name
EOF
}
if [ -z $USER ]; then
force_response "Enter your Twitter user name: " username
USER=$username
fi
if [ -z $PASS ]; then
force_response "Enter your Twitter password: " password
PASS=$password
fi
if [ -z "$MESSAGE" ]; then
force_response "Enter your update message: " message
MESSAGE=$message
fi
curl -u ${USER-`whoami`}:$PASS -d status="$MESSAGE" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml
exit 0
I prefer to copy the script to /usr/local/bin, put my Twitter information in the script itself, and then:
If you don't like that, you can do something like this:
If you simply execute the script, it should prompt you for the various required information.
I don't claim to be the most skilled bash scripter on the Internets. I encourage you to let me know what you think about it, fork it and improve it, or steal it and tailor it to your use.
Also, I am well aware that I spent more time on this than simplifying that curl call was really worth. I loved every freakin' minute of it, too.
Note: Some functions in this script, as well as much of the style, is courtesy of browsing scripts written by my friend Aaron Schaefer. So, thanks, Aaron!
