Labnotes

Distributed Twitter Client in 20 lines of code

There you go.

require 'rubygems'
require 'xmpp4r'
require 'xmpp4r/roster'

puts 'Connecting ...'
client = Jabber::Client.new(ARGV[0]).connect('talk.google.com')
client.auth(ARGV[1])
puts 'Receiving'
roster = Jabber::Roster::Helper.new(client)
roster.add_presence_callback do |roster_item, old_presence, new_presence|
  if new_presence
    from = roster_item.iname || "#{new_presence.from.node}@#{new_presence.from.domain}"
    if new_presence.status
      puts "#{from}: #{new_presence.status}"
    end
  end
end
client.send(Jabber::Presence.new)
Thread.stop
client.close

Run from the command line:

$ ruby distwit.rb <jabber_id> <password>
Connecting ...
Receiving
Andre Lewis: Away
Matthieu Riou: Enjoying a JavaOne couch
Matthieu Riou: Entertaining Assaf
Alexis Midon: hacking in a couch @community-one

Now just wait for your friends to status away using their IM client.

And don’t forget, please yo-yo the rrm.

May 6th, 2008

Joe Cascio

Very interesting and ties right into this post I just made about Distributed Twiiter. Would be interested in your take on it.
http://tinyurl.com/6j7×79

May 7th, 2008

Erik Kastner

Here’s something:
http://pastie.textmate.org/pastes/178297
One line twitter bot

May 7th, 2008

Marcus Breese

Similar thing in Python:
http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/5474

This type of distributed system makes a lot of sense… But the largest problem that I see is that people already have a GUI IM client that they can use. So, what would the client for this really be? Another GUI IM(-lite) client? Would it be a web-based tracker (with the server tracking each person’s roster)?

I think it doesn’t quite live up to the ease of using Twitter, namely the lack of anything to install.

Now, I could see a web app that you gave your IM credentials to, and it tracked the people that you follow. You could then update your status there as well. But what you don’t necessarily want to (or expect to) receive IMs from everyone that you are tracking.

May 7th, 2008

Assaf

I would implement something like this as a Web-based tracker. Then you can use it from a browser, feed reader, write all sorts of fancy clients around it, e-mail notifications, SMS in/out, filtering, etc. It’s just replacing one piece of infrastructure with another that’s decentralized. You could be using your service, I would be using mine, and we’ll both be able to see each other’s statuses.

This example is intentionally simplified to show that XMPP already solved that problem, and something you can run from the command line to see what the timeline looks like (and no, you won’t be receiving any IMs, only status updates).

A real implementation would look different, for one you’ll want to run an XMPP server not multiple client threads polling for each user, but the concepts are all the same: use XMPP to decentralize and exchange statuses.

May 9th, 2008

links for 2008-05-09 « Breyten’s Dev Blog

[...] Labnotes " Distributed Twitter Client in 20 lines of code (tags: jabber presence ruby status twitter xmpp) [...]

May 26th, 2008

Bre Pettis – A Dream – Open Source Distributed Microblogging at I Make Things

[...] your personal info off of proprietary networks. – Link Distributed Twitter in 20 Lines of code. – Link APML – Link XXMP – Link « Getting Started in Video: [...]

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Distributed Twitter Client in 20 lines of code