twitter

Twitter connection object

Description

The twitter function creates a twitter object, which represents a Twitter^® connection.

To establish the connection, you must obtain these required credentials from Twitter:

• Consumer key

• Consumer secret

• Access token

• Access token secret

To obtain these credentials, you must first log in to your Twitter account. Then, fill out the form in Create an application.

After you create a twitter object, you can use the object functions to retrieve historical Twitter data with a Twitter connection. Or, you can retrieve other Twitter data by using the Twitter REST API to access other REST API endpoints.

Creation

Syntax

c = twitter(consumerkey,consumersecret,accesstoken,accesstokensecret)

Description

c = twitter(consumerkey,consumersecret,accesstoken,accesstokensecret) creates a Twitter connection using the consumer key, consumer secret, access token, and access token secret.

Input Arguments

consumerkey — Consumer key

character vector | string scalar

Consumer key (API key), specified as a character vector or string scalar. To obtain your consumer key, fill out the form in Create an application.

Data Types: char | string

consumersecret — Consumer secret

character vector | string scalar

Consumer secret (API secret), specified as a character vector or string scalar. To obtain your consumer secret, fill out the form in Create an application.

Data Types: char | string

accesstoken — Access token

character vector | string scalar

Access token, specified as a character vector or string scalar. To obtain your access token, fill out the form in Create an application.

Data Types: char | string

accesstokensecret — Access token secret

character vector | string scalar

Access token secret, specified as a character vector or string scalar. To obtain your access token secret, fill out the form in Create an application.

Data Types: char | string

Properties

Name — Account name

character vector

Account name in the Twitter profile, specified as a character vector.

Data Types: char

ScreenName — Twitter user name

character vector

Twitter user name, specified as a character vector.

Example: @username

Data Types: char

MetaData — Twitter account and profile information

structure

Twitter account and profile information, specified as a structure.

After creating a Twitter connection, you can access your account and profile information using the MetaData property. For example:

c.MetaData

ans = 

  struct with fields:

                                    id: 1.234e+17
                                id_str: '123456789101112141'
                                  name: 'Full Name'
                           screen_name: 'username'
                           ...

(The values here do not represent real Twitter data.)

Data Types: struct

StatusCode — Connection status code

matlab.net.http.StatusCode object

Connection status code, specified as a matlab.net.http.StatusCode object. When this property has the value OK, the Twitter connection is successful.

Object Functions

search	Search for Tweets
getdata	Retrieve Twitter data
postdata	Post Twitter data

Examples

Search for Tweets

Use a Twitter connection object to search for Tweets.

Create a Twitter connection using your credentials. (The values in this example do not represent real Twitter credentials.)

consumerkey = 'abcdefghijklmnop123456789';
consumersecret = 'qrstuvwxyz123456789';
accesstoken = '123456789abcdefghijklmnop';
accesstokensecret = '123456789qrstuvwxyz';

c = twitter(consumerkey,consumersecret,accesstoken,accesstokensecret);

Check the Twitter connection. If the StatusCode property has the value OK, the connection is successful.

c.StatusCode

ans = 

    OK

Search for Tweets using the Twitter connection object and the search term MathWorks.

tweetquery = 'MathWorks';
d = search(c,tweetquery)

d = 

  ResponseMessage with properties:

    StatusLine: 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK'
    StatusCode: OK
        Header: [1×25 matlab.net.http.HeaderField]
          Body: [1×1 matlab.net.http.MessageBody]
     Completed: 0

d is a matlab.net.http.ResponseMessage object. The StatusCode property shows OK, indicating a successful HTTP request.

Access MathWorks^® Tweets. Display the 12th Tweet.

 d.Body.Data.statuses{12}.text

ans =

    'MATLAB Control Systems Examples https://t.co/g2P86srv33'

You can search for other Tweets using the search function. To retrieve other Twitter data, use the getdata function.