Upload media to twitter using perl - perl

Question

Has anyone successfully uploaded media to Twitter, ie posted a tweet with an image using Perl?
I would like to upload images from my blog without doing it all manually.
update_with_media(status, media[]) is deprecated, and crashes. Twitter says to use plain update(), passing a media id. However it is first necessary to upload the media to get the id, and I can find no code examples.
Any experience in this area?
Cheers,
Peter

Answer 1

I thought I'd add an update here even though the thread is quite old. I too was looking for an answer to how to use Perl to upload media to twitter.
Net::Twitter is perfectly capable of sending PNG images up to Twitter, though the documentation is poor. The OP is correct that update_with_media is deprecated and crashed for us.
You do need to use the $nt->upload AND $nt->update methods combined. You upload the RAW PNG file encoded with base64, I could not get the RAW PNG file upload to work but no issues when base64 encoded. The upload method returns, on success, a JSON structure which has the media_ids in. These id's are then passed with the $nt->update method. Here's some actual code
use Net::Twitter;
use File::Slurp;
use MIME::Base64;
use Data::Dumper;
my $nt = Net::Twitter->new(
ssl => 1,
traits => [qw/API::RESTv1_1/],
consumer_key => $config->{twitter}{api_key},
consumer_secret => $config->{twitter}{api_secret},
access_token => $config->{twitter}{access_token},
access_token_secret => $config->{twitter}{access_token_secret},
);
my $filename = "<somelink to a PNG file>";
my $file_contents = read_file ($filename , binmode => ':raw');
my $status = $nt->upload(encode_base64($file_contents));
print "SendTweet: status = ".Dumper($status);
my $status2;
eval {
$status2 = $nt->update({status => $s , media_ids => $status->{media_id} });
print "status2 = ".Dumper($status2);
};
if ($#)
{
print "Error: $#\n";
}
The code is pulled directly from our working test code so should work. This code is purely proof of concept so you will need to add in all your twitter authentication etc.
We have only done PNG files but I see no reason why video etc shouldn't work fine as we simply followed the Twitter docs.
Rob

Answer 2

In the end I used readpipe with twurl. Had I known about twurl in the first place I likely would not have bothered with Net::Twitter! twurl works great, and returns a full json string to tell you what went wrong, if anything.

Answer 3

Pre-requisite: you need to get the Oauth keys for your twitter account. (See here - https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/basics/authentication/guides/access-tokens.html). There are some step by step online exmaples elsewhere also that can help.
Here's the code I ended up with.
First call the tweet module (and these are not valid keys by the way - just insert yours)
use Jimtweet;
my $tweet=Jimtweet->new();
$tweet->consumer_key('KvfevhjwkKJvinvalidkeycvhejwkKJVCwe');
$tweet->consumer_secret('KvfevhjwkKJvcvnvalidkeyhejwkKJVCwe');
$tweet->oauth_token('KvfevhjwkKJvcvhenvalidkeyjwkKJVCwKvfevhjwkKJvcvhejwkKJVCweVU');
$tweet->oauth_token_secret('KvfevhjwkKJvcvhejwnvalidkeykKJVCwe');
my $res = $tweet->update_status($message, $ENV{DOCUMENT_ROOT}.$li);
Jimtweet is a free module I found online (I forget where), but I had to modify it to do the image upload. It follows below.
$message is the text status message to send
$li contains the local path to the file I want to upload. This is a file local on the server. $ENV{DOCUMENT_ROOT} contains the server path to the public HTML files on my website.
$res contains a JSON reply from twitter you can look at if you need to.
If you want to use this, cut & paste everything from 'package Jimtweet;' and on into a file called Jimtweet.pm which the above code should use. If your perl installation can't find the module try adding the line use lib "/home/your/path/to/jimtweet/directory;" before the use Jimtweet; line.
Twitter requires an image to be uploaded, it then returns a media_id, then you include the media_id in a regular message you want to post. See Jimtweet package below:
package Jimtweet;
#####JimTweet 0.1 By James Januszka 2010
#####Email:jimjanuszka#gmail.com
#####Twitter:#jamesjanuszka
#####Modifications by John Bell to include image upload. Twitter: #BellUkcbajr
use strict;
use warnings;
use LWP;
use HTTP::Headers;
use URI::Encode qw(uri_encode);
use URI::Escape qw(uri_escape);
use Digest::HMAC_SHA1;
####Constructor####
sub new {
my $self={};
$self->{OAUTH_VERSION}=uri_escape("1.0");
$self->{OAUTH_SIGNATURE_METHOD}=uri_escape("HMAC-SHA1");
$self->{OAUTH_TIMESTAMP}=undef;
$self->{OAUTH_NONCE}=undef;
$self->{AGENT}="jimtweet/0.1";
#####################
#Use this for status updates
$self->{URLx}="https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/update.json";
#####################
#Use this for image upload
$self->{URL}="https://upload.twitter.com/1.1/media/upload.json";
$self->{BROWSER}=LWP::UserAgent->new(agent =>$self->{AGENT});
$self->{CONSUMER_KEY}=undef;
$self->{CONSUMER_SECRET}=undef;
$self->{OAUTH_TOKEN}=undef;
$self->{OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET}=undef;
$self->{STATUS}=undef;
$self->{MEDIAurl}=undef;
bless($self);
return $self;
}
sub consumer_key{
my $self=shift;
if (#_) { $self->{CONSUMER_KEY}=uri_escape(shift) }
return $self->{CONSUMER_KEY};
}
sub consumer_secret{
my $self = shift;
if (#_) { $self->{CONSUMER_SECRET}=uri_escape(shift) }
return $self->{CONSUMER_SECRET};
}
sub oauth_token{
my $self = shift;
if (#_) { $self->{OAUTH_TOKEN}=uri_escape(shift) }
return $self->{OAUTH_TOKEN};
}
sub oauth_token_secret{
my $self = shift;
if (#_) { $self->{OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET}=uri_escape(shift) }
return $self->{OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET};
}
sub update_status(#){
sleep(2);
my $self = shift;
if (#_) { $self->{STATUS}=uri_escape(shift) }
if (#_) { $self->{MEDIAurl}=shift }
#Got parameters. Now create the POST to upload an image
my $seconds = time();
$self->{OAUTH_TIMESTAMP}=uri_escape($seconds);
$self->{OAUTH_NONCE}=$self->{OAUTH_TIMESTAMP};
#####################
#Use this for uploads. Parameters have to be in alphabetical order!
my $query=qq(oauth_consumer_key=$self->{CONSUMER_KEY}&oauth_nonce=$self->{OAUTH_NONCE}&oauth_signature_method=$self->{OAUTH_SIGNATURE_METHOD}&oauth_timestamp=$self->{OAUTH_TIMESTAMP}&oauth_token=$self->{OAUTH_TOKEN}&oauth_version=$self->{OAUTH_VERSION});
my $sig="POST&";
$sig .=uri_encode($self->{URL},1);
$sig .="&";
$sig .=uri_encode($query,1);
my $sig_key=$self->{CONSUMER_SECRET};
$sig_key .="&";
$sig_key .=$self->{OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET};
my $hmac = Digest::HMAC_SHA1->new($sig_key);
$hmac->add($sig);
my $oauth_signature_base64=$hmac->b64digest;
$oauth_signature_base64 .="=";
my $utf8_oauth_signature_base64=uri_escape($oauth_signature_base64);
my $header=qq(OAuth oauth_nonce="$self->{OAUTH_NONCE}", oauth_signature_method="$self->{OAUTH_SIGNATURE_METHOD}", oauth_timestamp="$self->{OAUTH_TIMESTAMP}", oauth_consumer_key="$self->{CONSUMER_KEY}", oauth_token="$self->{OAUTH_TOKEN}", oauth_signature="$utf8_oauth_signature_base64", oauth_version="$self->{OAUTH_VERSION}");
my $res = $self->{BROWSER}->post(
$self->{URL},
'Authorization' => $header,
'content-type' => 'form-data',
'Content' => [ media => ["$self->{MEDIAurl}"] ]
);
use JSON;
my $response = decode_json ($res->content);
my $media_id = $response->{'media_id'};
$seconds = time();
$self->{OAUTH_TIMESTAMP}=uri_escape($seconds);
$self->{OAUTH_NONCE}=$self->{OAUTH_TIMESTAMP}
my $queryx=qq(media_ids=$media_id&oauth_consumer_key=$self->{CONSUMER_KEY}&oauth_nonce=$self->{OAUTH_NONCE}&oauth_signature_method=$self->{OAUTH_SIGNATURE_METHOD}&oauth_timestamp=$self->{OAUTH_TIMESTAMP}&oauth_token=$self->{OAUTH_TOKEN}&oauth_version=$self->{OAUTH_VERSION}&status=$self->{STATUS});
my $sigx="POST&";
$sigx .=uri_encode($self->{URLx},1);
$sigx .="&";
$sigx .=uri_encode($queryx,1);
my $hmacx = Digest::HMAC_SHA1->new($sig_key);
$hmacx->add($sigx);
my $oauth_signature_base64x=$hmacx->b64digest;
$oauth_signature_base64x .="=";
my $utf8_oauth_signature_base64x=uri_escape($oauth_signature_base64x);
my $headerx=qq(OAuth oauth_nonce="$self->{OAUTH_NONCE}", oauth_signature_method="$self->{OAUTH_SIGNATURE_METHOD}", oauth_timestamp="$self->{OAUTH_TIMESTAMP}", oauth_consumer_key="$self->{CONSUMER_KEY}", oauth_token="$self->{OAUTH_TOKEN}", oauth_signature="$utf8_oauth_signature_base64x", oauth_version="$self->{OAUTH_VERSION}");
#And done generating content. Now to POST to twitter.
$res = $self->{BROWSER}->post(
$self->{URLx},
'Authorization' => $headerx,
'content-type' => 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
'Content' => qq(media_ids=$media_id&status=$self->{STATUS})
);
return $res;
}
####Footer####
1; #so the require or use succeeds