Christopher Peri - Sams Teach Yourself the Twitter API in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself -- Hours)

Christopher Peri
Ben Ho
Jon Wu
Chia Hwu

800 East 96th Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46240 USA

Sams Teach Yourself the Twitter API in 24 Hours

Copyright 2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

ISBN-13: 978-0-672-33110-7
ISBN-10: 0-672-33110-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Peri, Christopher A., 1964
Sams teach yourself the Twitter API in 24 hours / Christopher A. Peri, Bess P. Ho.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-672-33110-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-672-33110-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Application program interfaces (Computer software) 2. Twitter. I. Ho, Bess P.,
1967- II. Title. III. Title: Teach yourself the Twitter API in 24 hours.
QA76.76.A63P47 2011
006.7'54dc23
2011022576

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing June 2011

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Dr. Christopher Peri received his Doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in Architecture. His focus was on Collaboration in Virtual Environments delving into methods that facilitate designers and engineers to improve communication over remote networks.

He started playing with the Twitter API very early in the API release, creating his own Twitter client called TwittFilter, which is geared more to the occasional user then someone who uses Twitter all the time. As time went on, he added more and more features and functions for his own personal use, until one day he realized he had a fairly sophisticated application and opened it up to the general public to use. He learned quite a bit about the Twitter API the hard wayby simply coding things up and seeing what happens. Although TwittFilter is still a personal project, he has already created a number of private Twitter applications, robots, and smaller projects like NewsSnacker.com, which is open to the public.

Bess Ho is a UI Engineer in mobile, tablet, TV, and web with a strong background in data analytic and consumer behavior. She received her Master Degree from the University of California, Davis in Food Science and Technology. Her focus was on Consumer Sensory Science and Engineering. She is the winner of Nokia Open Screen Project Fund and was elected as Samsung Star in the Samsung Mobile Innovator worldwide program. She served as technical editor for the book titled Building OpenSocial Apps: A Field Guide to Working with MySpace Platform (Addison Wesley, 2009). She has presented mobile technology at Stanford University, OReilly Web20 Expo SF, Where20 Conference, Silicon Valley China Wireless Conference, and many developer events. Currently, she is Mobile Architect (EIR) for Archimedes Ventures. She also advises many early-stage startups in UI/UXP design and mobile development in multiple platforms. She is actively teaching many mobile classes such as iOS SDK in Silicon Valley and online courses at Udemy.com. You can follow her at Twitter @Bess or Slideshare at www.slideshare.net/bess.ho. Her developer blog is at http://www.bess.co.

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This book on the Twitter API is geared to the programmer who is just a bit past beginnerwho knows the basics of LAMP, including how to set up a basic server, PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. You do not have to be an expert programmer to use this book, but you should know how to look things up. In writing this book, we have tried to provide you with everything you need to get a simple Twitter client up and running. We include an hour on setting up your environment, as well as providing you with HTML and CSS codes to have something up and running. However, its beyond the scope of this book to explain what is happening with these codes. Instead, we focus on the code surrounding the API calls, OAuth, and the returns. That does not mean that you could not use this book if you are a beginner programmer. Because we provide you with all the code and build an application up step by step, you can stop at any time and look up parts of the code you do not understand. However, if you have never coded anything before, you may find that this book moves far too fast. It may be better to get an introductory book on basic programming in PHP before reading this book.