Simple queries with Twitter API using only an access_token

Question

I'm coding a C#.Net WPF 4.0 application that connects to Facebook and Twitter via oauth. With Facebook Graph API, I'm able to authorize, sign-in with oauth, exchange a temporary access_token to a almost persistent access token, and then, fetch any data only by adding the access_token next to my query, or posting on the wall, like this: [http://Url/query/access_token], and all of this without any SDK or any other library.

I tried to do the same with Twitter but I'm all mixed-up. I've been searching for examples on how to fetch some Json data the same way I do in Facebook, but I found nothing, probably because I don't know what to search. What is the flow that I need to follow to be able to make queries with only a direct url and a token?

Answer 1

you should do the following:

1. Get access token for the user: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/auth/obtaining-access-tokens

2. Use one of the REST APIs: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api

3. Generate OAuth header and insert it into your request. Below is code from my app which uploads tweet and images into twitter - but GET requests will be similar. NOTE: I'm using 3rd-party OAuth class from https://cropperplugins.svn.codeplex.com/svn/Cropper.Plugins/TwitPic/OAuth.cs

   var oauth = new OAuth.Manager();
   oauth["consumer_key"] = Settings.TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY;
   oauth["consumer_secret"] = Settings.TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET;
   oauth["token"] = item.AccessToken;
   oauth["token_secret"] = item.AccessSecret;
   
   var url = "https://upload.twitter.com/1/statuses/update_with_media.xml";
   var authzHeader = oauth.GenerateAuthzHeader(url, "POST");
   
   foreach (var imageName in item.Images.Split('|'))
   {
       var fileData = PhotoThubmnailBO.GetThumbnailForImage(imageName, ThumbnailType.FullSize).Photo;
   
       // this code comes from http://cheesoexamples.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=TweetIt&referringTitle=Home
       // also see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7442743/how-does-one-upload-a-photo-to-twitter-with-the-api-function-post-statuses-updat
       var request = (HttpWebRequest) WebRequest.Create(url);
   
       request.Method = "POST";
       request.PreAuthenticate = true;
       request.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = true;
       request.Headers.Add("Authorization", authzHeader);
   
       string boundary = "~~~~~~" +
                         Guid.NewGuid().ToString().Substring(18).Replace("-", "") +
                         "~~~~~~";
   
       var separator = "--" + boundary;
       var footer = "\r\n" + separator + "--\r\n";
       string shortFileName = imageName;
       string fileContentType = GetMimeType(shortFileName);
       string fileHeader = string.Format("Content-Disposition: file; " +
                                         "name=\"media\"; filename=\"{0}\"",
                                         shortFileName);
       var encoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("iso-8859-1");
   
       var contents = new StringBuilder();
       contents.AppendLine(separator);
       contents.AppendLine("Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"status\"");
       contents.AppendLine();
       contents.AppendLine(item.UserMessage);
       contents.AppendLine(separator);
       contents.AppendLine(fileHeader);
       contents.AppendLine(string.Format("Content-Type: {0}", fileContentType));
       contents.AppendLine();
   
       // actually send the request
       request.ServicePoint.Expect100Continue = false;
       request.ContentType = "multipart/form-data; boundary=" + boundary;
   
       using (var s = request.GetRequestStream())
       {
           byte[] bytes = encoding.GetBytes(contents.ToString());
           s.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
           bytes = fileData;
           s.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
           bytes = encoding.GetBytes(footer);
           s.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
       }
   
       using (var response = (HttpWebResponse) request.GetResponse())
       {
           if (response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.OK)
           {
               throw new Exception(response.StatusDescription);
           }
       }
   }