Tweet using Node.js and Twitter API

Tweeting programmatically using Node.js and the Twitter API can be a powerful tool for automating your social media interactions. Whether you’re looking to schedule tweets, respond to mentions, or analyze your Twitter data, Node.js offers a versatile platform for building Twitter bots and applications.

In this article, we will walk you through the steps to set up a Node.js environment, authenticate with the Twitter API, and send a tweet. We’ll use the twitter-api-v2 library, a modern and user-friendly wrapper around the Twitter API.

Approach

To create and post a tweet you can follow the steps below:

• Create a Twitter developer account & get API credentials  (Link to create your developer account – https://developer.twitter.com/en )
• Create a new node project and initialize npm write the following commands in the shell.

Steps to Setup Project

Step 1: Make a folder structure for the project.

mkdir tweetPoster

Step 2: Navigate to the project directory

cd tweetPoster

Step 3: Initialize the NodeJs project inside the myapp folder.

npm init -y

Step 4: Install the necessary packages/libraries in your project using the following commands. Install twitter-api-v2 library using the following command in the shell.

npm install twitter-api-v2

Project Structure:

The updated dependencies in package.json file will look like:

"dependencies": {
    "twitter-api-v2": "^1.17.1"
  }

Step 5: Create an index.js file inside tweetPoster directory. Import twitter-api-v2 library in index.js 

const { TwitterApi } = require("twitter-api-v2");

Step 6: Create a Twitter client by filling in your API keys and secrets, this will authenticate your account and allow you to use Twitter API to create requests and get responses. 

const client = new TwitterApi({
      appKey: "**",
      appSecret: "**",
      accessToken: "**",
      accessSecret: "**",
      bearerToken:"**",
});

Step 7: Provide read and write controls to your client so it can create new tweets 

const rwClient = client.readWrite;

Step 8: ( For only text tweets) create a textTweet asynchronised function and then create a try-catch, inside the try block, create await tweet request using rwClient.v2, and inside .tweet() you can put any text in string format you want to tweet then put a console.log(“success”). So, in case of a tweet is posted successfully, success will get printed in the terminal. Now, add console.log(error) in the catch block. So, in case of any failure, error will get printed in the terminal.

const textTweet = async () => {
      try {
        await rwClient.v2.tweet(
            "This tweet has been created using nodejs");
        console.log("success");
      } catch (error) {
        console.error(error);
      }
};

Step 9: (For text tweet with media) create a mediaTweet asynchronised function and then create a try-catch, inside the try block, create a mediaId const, and create await uploadMedia request (put the path of the image you want to post in place of “image_path”). The uploadMedia method is used to upload the media file, and the mediaId variable is assigned the unique identifier that Twitter assigns to the uploaded media. create await tweet request using rwClient.v2 and inside .tweet() you can put a JavaScript object.

{
      text: "any text you wish to post with image/media ",
      media: { media_ids: [mediaId] },
}

Step 10:  Then put a console.log(“success”). So, in case of a tweet is posted successfully, success will get printed in the terminal. Now, add console.log(error) in the catch block. So, in case of any failure, error will get printed in the terminal.

const mediaTweet = async () => {
      try {
        const mediaId = await client.v1.uploadMedia("image_path");
        await rwClient.v2.tweet({
              text: "Twitter is a fantastic social network. Look at this:",
              media: { media_ids: [mediaId] },
        });
        console.log("success");
      } catch (e) {
        console.error(e);
      }
};

Step 11: Call any or both textTweet() & mediaTweet() methods.

textTweet();
mediaTweet();

Example: Implementation to Tweet using twitter API in nodeJS.

// app.js

// Import twitter-api-v2
const { TwitterApi } = require("twitter-api-v2");

// Fill your API credentials
const client = new TwitterApi({
    appKey: "**",
    appSecret: "**",
    accessToken: "**",
    accessSecret: "**",
    bearerToken: "**",
});

// Provide read write controls
const rwClient = client.readWrite;

// Create textTweet function which post
// a text only tweet
const tweetText = async () => {
    try {

        // Use .tweet() method and pass the
        // text you want to post
        await rwClient.v2.tweet(
            "This tweet has been created using nodejs");

        console.log("success");
    } catch (error) {
        console.log(error);
    }
};

// Create tweet function which post
// tweet with media and text
const mediaTweet = async () => {
    try {

        // Create mediaID 
        const mediaId = await client.v1.uploadMedia(

            // Put path of image you wish to post
            "./1605232393098780672example.png"
        );

        // Use tweet() method and pass object with text 
        // in text feild and media items in media feild
        await rwClient.v2.tweet({
            text:
                "Twitter is a fantastic social network. Look at this:",
            media: { media_ids: [mediaId] },
        });
        console.log("success");
    } catch (error) {
        console.log(error);
    }
};

// Call any of methods and you are done 
textTweet();
mediaTweet();

Step to Run Application: Run the application using the following command from the root directory of the project

node index.js

output of the above program

Tweet Samples:

sample of only text tweet