Using the Twitter REST API v1.1 from Azure Mobile Services

Since the retirement of the Twitter REST API v1, I have been having trouble doing a simple query using the new search API introduced in version 1.1 from Azure Mobile Services because it now requires a signed authentication header in the request using the OAuth 1.0 protocol.

I would suggest reading the tutorial on  Schedule recurring jobs in Mobile Services which provides a basic walk through on creating a scheduled job in Azure Mobile Services that requests tweets from Twitter and stores it in a table.

The reason you should read this tutorial is to gain some background knowledge on the concept for better understanding of my newly devised method of use.

The problem with the [out-dated] tutorial mentioned above is that it still uses version 1 of the recently depreciated Twitter REST API.

Current (old) approach

Here's the code for the scheduler borrowed from the [current] tutorial:

var updatesTable = tables.getTable('Updates');  
var request = require('request');

function getUpdates() {  
    // Check what is the last tweet we stored when the job last ran
    // and ask Twitter to only give us more recent tweets
    appendLastTweetId(
        'http://search.twitter.com/search.json?q=%23mobileservices&result_type=recent', 
        function twitterUrlReady(url){
            request(url, function tweetsLoaded (error, response, body) {
                if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
                    var results = JSON.parse(body).results;
                    if(results){
                        console.log('Fetched new results from Twitter');
                        results.forEach(function visitResult(tweet){
                            if(!filterOutTweet(tweet)){
                                var update = {
                                    twitterId: tweet.id,
                                    text: tweet.text,
                                    author: tweet.from_user,
                                    date: tweet.created_at
                                };
                                updatesTable.insert(update);
                            }
                        });
                    }            
                } else { 
                    console.error('Could not contact Twitter');
                }
            });
    });
}

// Find the largest (most recent) tweet ID we have already stored
// (if we have stored any) and ask Twitter to only return more
// recent ones
function appendLastTweetId(url, callback){  
    updatesTable
    .orderByDescending('twitterId')
    .read({success: function readUpdates(updates){
        if(updates.length){
            callback(url + '&since_id=' + (updates[0].twitterId + 1));
        } else {
            callback(url);
        }
    }});
}

function filterOutTweet(tweet){  
    // Remove retweets and replies
    return (tweet.text.indexOf('RT') === 0 || tweet.to_user_id);
}

After plenty of research (and failed attempts) on properly signing the request to have Twitter authenticate it using custom code, I realised that Azure Mobile Services is hosted by a NodeJs process and learned that the 'Request'-object comes out-of-the-box with OAuth support.

New (updated) approach

By simply assigning the application's keys and tokens to the OAuth property of the request, it worked like a charm:

var updatesTable = tables.getTable('Updates');  
var request = require('request');

var url = "https://api.twitter.com/1.1/search/tweets.json?q=%23mobileservices&result_type=recent";

var consumerKey = '[your consumer key]',  
    accessToken= '[your access token]',
    consumerSecret = '[your consumer secret]',
    accessTokenSecret = '[your access token secret]';

function getUpdates() {  
    // Check what is the last tweet we stored when the job last ran
    // and ask Twitter to only give us more recent tweets
    appendLastTweetId(
        url, 
        function twitterUrlReady(url){

            request.get({
                url: url,
                oauth: {
                    consumer_key: consumerKey,
                    consumer_secret: consumerSecret,
                    token: accessToken,
                    token_secret: accessTokenSecret
                }
            }, function tweetsLoaded (error, response, body) {
                if (!error && response.statusCode == 200) {
                    var results = JSON.parse(body).statuses;
                    if(results){
                        console.log('Fetched new results from Twitter');
                        results.forEach(function visitResult(tweet){
                            if(!filterOutTweet(tweet)){
                                var update = {
                                    twitterId: tweet.id,
                                    text: tweet.text,
                                    author: tweet.user.screen_name,
                                    date: tweet.created_at,
                                    photo: tweet.user.profile_image_url
                                };
                                updatesTable.insert(update);
                            }
                        });
                    }            
                } else { 
                    console.error('Could not contact Twitter');
                }
            });
    });
 }

// Find the largest (most recent) tweet ID we have already stored
// (if we have stored any) and ask Twitter to only return more
// recent ones
function appendLastTweetId(url, callback){  
    updatesTable
    .orderByDescending('twitterId')
    .read({success: function readUpdates(updates){
        if(updates.length){
            callback(url + '&since_id=' + (updates[0].twitterId + 2));
        } else {
            callback(url);
        }
    }});
}

function filterOutTweet(tweet){  
    // Remove retweets and replies
    return (tweet.text.indexOf('RT') === 0 || tweet.to_user_id);
}

Do take note, there are some breaking changes to the API therefor I strongly recommend studying the Twitter API 1.1 documentation. Some of the other changes I had to make to the original code include changing the expected response body property 'results' to 'statuses' as well as the mapping to the.'update' object.

I hope that this saves someone out there somewhere a lot of trouble and time.

Your comments and tweets are welcome.

@FanieReynders.

Till next time!