Is automated sharing possible for Twitter in the background on iOS? - iphone

Question

I wanted to share a Twitter feed on the Twitter wall which contains an image and some text. I want support from iOS 4.3 to iOS 6.0.1. Is sharing possible in the background without a send/share button? How do I implement it?

Answer 1

The API call that you need to send is:
https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/post/statuses/update_with_media
Before making that call, of course, you will need to authenticate with Twitter via xAuth/OAuth. Unless you get special permission from Twitter to do otherwise, it looks like you will need to use OAuth,
https://dev.twitter.com/docs/oauth/xauth
To background the request, it will likely make sense to use Grand Central Dispatch --that is unless you have a lot of different Twitter requests to send. In that case, I would instead opt for an NSOperationQueue where maxConcurrentOperationCount = 1. See the following:
http://www.fieryrobot.com/blog/2010/06/27/a-simple-job-queue-with-grand-central-dispatch/
http://www.raywenderlich.com/19788/how-to-use-nsoperations-and-nsoperationqueues
Nevertheless, because OAuth is such a pain, it will likely make sense to use a third party library. I've never used it before, but here is an example using MGTwitterEngine:
Twitter's statuses/update_with_media on iOS returns 500 error
If you were able to limit use to iOS 5+, then I would highly recommend using the SLRequest object. The advantage of this approach is that you integrate with the iOS users account directly, so they don't have to authenticate through a UIWebView or something cheesy.
To do so, you would simply plug in the appropriate Twitter API url in the following function requestForServiceType:requestMethod:URL:parameters: and obtain your SLRequest object. Then assign the appropriate Twitter ACAccount obtained from the ACAccountStore using requestAccessToAccountsWithType:options:completion:. Finally make your call to performRequestWithHandler, which would then perform your request asynchronously.

Answer 2

The following code will not post in background but it can post across ios versions...
You can use condition for ios versions like below code.This is working code I have implemented and it is working on both ios 5 and 6. Please check in ios 4 to confirm.I think it should work.
#import "Twitter/Twitter.h"
#import "Social/Social.h"
-(IBAction)tweetPost:(id)sender
{
if ([self isSocialAvailable])
{
SLComposeViewController *tweetComposer=[SLComposeViewController composeViewControllerForServiceType:SLServiceTypeTwitter];
if ([SLComposeViewController isAvailableForServiceType:SLServiceTypeTwitter]) {
SLComposeViewControllerCompletionHandler __block completionHandler=
^(SLComposeViewControllerResult result){
[tweetComposer dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:nil];
switch(result){
case SLComposeViewControllerResultCancelled:
default:
{
NSLog(#"Cancelled.....");
}
break;
case SLComposeViewControllerResultDone:
{
NSLog(#"Posted....");
UIAlertView * alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:#"Sent"
message:nil
delegate:nil
cancelButtonTitle:#"Dismiss"
otherButtonTitles: nil];
[alert show];
}
break;
}};
NSString*message = #"posting to twitter test ios 6";
[tweetComposer setInitialText:message];
[tweetComposer addImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"2.jpg"]];
[tweetComposer addURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoZ2Be2zLq8"]];
[tweetComposer setCompletionHandler:completionHandler];
[self presentViewController:tweetComposer animated:YES completion:nil];
}
}
else
{
TWTweetComposeViewController *twitter= [[TWTweetComposeViewController alloc] init];
[twitter addImage:[UIImage imageNamed:#"2.jpg"]];
[twitter addURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoZ2Be2zLq8"]];
[twitter setInitialText:#"Tweet from iOS 5 app using the Twitter framework."];
[self presentModalViewController:twitter animated:YES];
twitter.completionHandler = ^(TWTweetComposeViewControllerResult result)
{
NSString *title = #"Tweet Status";
NSString *msg;
if (result == TWTweetComposeViewControllerResultCancelled)
msg = #"Tweet compostion was canceled.";
else if (result == TWTweetComposeViewControllerResultDone)
msg = #"Tweet composition completed.";
// Show alert to see how things went...
UIAlertView* alertView = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:title message:msg delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:#"Okay" otherButtonTitles:nil];
[alertView show];
};
}
}
-(BOOL)isSocialAvailable {
return NSClassFromString(#"SLComposeViewController") != nil;
}
You need to include three frameworks named social,adSupport and Accounts.Check which one not needed with twitter feed post.
Hope ,this will help you.

Answer 3

Yes, but you'll need find some 1.1 API wrapper (thing which generates API requests, singns them etc) for you and authoriser (MGTWitter engine works fine). I have a working solution for sharing (text only) and getting user info for iOS 4+.
And about background part - that depends on how you implement that (i.e. notifications or continious background execution or gps callbacs etc...).