Ch 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 ). 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.