Twitter data source
Twitter data sources are used to index content from the Twitter social media platform.
| Usage of Funnelback to gather content from Twitter must comply with Twitter’s terms of service. |
Getting authentication keys and secrets
Before you can crawl Twitter, ensure that you have:
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A Twitter account
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Created an application within Twitter (your Twitter login will be required)
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Application Name
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Application Description
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Website
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CallbackURL
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Once complete, note your OAuth consumer key/consumer secret and OAuth access token / token secret.
Discarding old tweets
Tweets older than a certain date can be discarded by enabling the XML date filter plugin and configuring it to discard the older items.
User mentions and hash-tags
User mentions and hash-tags within Twitter content can be made searchable by enabling the social tags plugin.
Metadata mappings
Twitter data sources include a number of default Twitter specific metadata mappings:
| Class ID | Type | Behaviour | Explanation | Metadata fields included |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
text |
content |
|
|
|
text |
display |
|
|
|
text |
content |
Tweet |
|
|
text |
content |
|
|
|
date |
date |
Date |
|
|
text |
content |
|
|
|
text |
display |
|
|
|
text |
display |
|
|
|
text |
display |
|
|
|
geospatial x/y co-ordinate |
N/A |
|
|
|
text |
display |
|
|
|
text |
display |
|
|
|
text |
display |
|
|
|
text |
content |
|
|
|
text |
content |
|
Use the -SF query processor option to access these metadata fields on the
search response and in the templates (i.e. `-SF=[author,hashtag]).
Limits
Please note that Twitter applies limits to the volume of content which can be retrieved from their APIs, and so in the case of large Twitter streams Funnelback may be unable to gather all historical content.
Working with the fetched data
Funnelback will crawl Twitter and convert responses into XML. You can use the metadata customisation tool to map elements to a metadata class.
To preview the crawled records please enable debug mode by setting the twitter.debug=true data source configuration option.
|
The XML that Funnelback generates for a Twitter data source is as follows:
<com.funnelback.socialmedia.twitter.TwitterXmlRecord>
<id>tweet_id</id>
<username>username</username>
<screenName>some username</screenName>
<profileImageUrl/>
<tweet>tweet content</tweet>
<createdDate>2018-06-20 14:58:03.0 UTC</createdDate>
<url>https://twitter.com/user_name/status/tweet_id</url>
<hashtags>
<Hashtag>
<start>110</start>
<end>119</end>
<text>hashtag conetnt</text>
</Hashtag>
</hashtags>
<linkedURLs>
<URL>
<start>133</start>
<end>156</end>
<shortUrl>https://t.co/qwert</shortUrl>
<expandedURL>http://bit.ly/qwert</expandedURL>
<displayURL>bit.ly/qwert</displayURL>
</URL>
</linkedURLs>
<isReTweet>false</isReTweet>
<linkedMediaURLs>
<MediaURL>
<baseUrl>http://pbs.twimg.com/media/qwert.jpg</baseUrl>
<thumbnail>
<pictureUrl>http://pbs.twimg.com/media/qwert.jpg:thumb</pictureUrl>
<width>150</width>
<height>150</height>
<resizeMethod>CROP</resizeMethod>
</thumbnail>
<small>
<pictureUrl>http://pbs.twimg.com/media/qwert.jpg:small</pictureUrl>
<width>430</width>
<height>430</height>
<resizeMethod>FIT</resizeMethod>
</small>
<medium>
<pictureUrl>http://pbs.twimg.com/media/qwert.jpg:medium</pictureUrl>
<width>430</width>
<height>430</height>
<resizeMethod>FIT</resizeMethod>
</medium>
<large>
<pictureUrl>http://pbs.twimg.com/media/qwert.jpg:large</pictureUrl>
<width>430</width>
<height>430</height>
<resizeMethod>FIT</resizeMethod>
</large>
</MediaURL>
</linkedMediaURLs>
</com.funnelback.socialmedia.twitter.TwitterXmlRecord>