Twitter collections
Twitter is a social media site focused publicly sharing short messages.
Please note that your 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:
-
A Twitter account
-
Created an application within Twitter https://twitter.com/login/error?username_or_email=username&redirect_after_login=https%3A%2F%2Fapps.twitter.com%2Fapp%2Fnew (your Twitter login will be required)
-
Application Name
-
Application Description
-
Website
-
CallbackURL
-
Once complete, note your OAuth consumer key/consumer secret and OAuth access token / token secret.
Configuration options
With the details above, you can create a new Twitter data source from the 'Create collection' menu.
The following settings are supported as part of the data source setup.
-
twitter.oauth.consumer-key: OAuth consumer key. -
twitter.oauth.consumer-secret: OAuth consumer secret. -
twitter.oauth.access-token: OAuth access token. -
twitter.oauth.token-secret: OAuth token secret. -
twitter.users: Comma delimited list of user names to crawl.
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can be retrieved from their APIs, and so in the case of large Twitter streams Funnelback may be unable to gather all historical content.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>