2.3.6. A program that posts one tweet

Below is a computer program written in the Python programming language. The program will post a single tweet that says: “This tweet was posted by a computer program!”. Since this is a computer program that posts on twitter, we would call this program a twitter bot.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand any of this Python code yet; we will build an understanding of code like this throughout the book.

import tweepy

bearer_token = "n4tossfgsafs_fake_bearer_token_isa53#$%$"
consumer_key = "sa@#4@fdfdsa_fake_consumer_key_$%DSG#%DG"
consumer_secret = "45adf$T$A_fake_consumer_secret_JESdsg"
access_token = "56sd5Ss4tsea_fake_access_token_%YE%hDsdr"
access_token_secret = "j^$dr_fake_consumer_key_^A5s#DR5s"

client = tweepy.Client(
   bearer_token=bearer_token,
   consumer_key=consumer_key, consumer_secret=consumer_secret,
   access_token=access_token, access_token_secret=access_token_secret
)

client.create_tweet(text="This tweet was posted by a computer program!")

Though you may not understand anything in the above code yet, I want to point out a couple things:

• The code above is full of English words like “import”, “key”, “secret”, which may help you guess the meaning of the code.

• There are also other symbols as well, though being used in a different way than in normal English, symbols like =, _, ., (, and )

• One particular piece of code gives a good hint as to what it is doing: create_tweet. That indeed is the part of the program where the tweet is posted.

• There are five pieces of text with random numbers and letters that include things like “fake_consumer_key” inside. These pieces of text are meant to be replaced with a set of special passwords to your actual twitter account. You can get these special passwords if you get developer access to twitter (see the page on Making a Twitter Bot Account). Once you put your special passwords in those locations then this code will post a tweet on your account.

We will go through that example code in more detail next.