Sending Automatic Twitter messages using Node-RED offered by IBM Bluemix

Node-RED is a  IBM flow creator tool, where users can use ready made input nodes, output nodes, write functions, inject and receive events to  and from various external devices ( or Internet of Things) like the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and others IoT devices as well send messages to  social media  portals like Twitter.

One can read more about it in this page http://nodered.org/.

Here I will blog about how to create a simple flow in the Node-RED and inject timely messages to my twitter account (@kiranshashiny) automatically.

To do this, You will need a
- twitter account
- IBM id



First login to IBM Bluemix using your IBM Id, and create an APP.


Open the URL shown- It should open a Node-RED editor page.


Click on "Go to your Node-RED flow editor"

It opens a blank canvas.

Click on Input-> Inject, and drag and drop it into the canvas.




You will see a node called timestamp.




Click on Social -> twitter, drag and drop it into the canvas.


 





Point at the output of timestamp and drag it to the input of Tweet. You will see a line connecting the nodes.


Double click on Timestamp and configure the node to send Twitter message every interval.



Now, double click on Tweet and fill in your twitter credentials.




Authorize and you will be prompted to close the new browser tab.








You will notice that the small red triangle is gone on Tweet node (this means the node is fully configured )

Click on Deploy


You will notice a small 'tweeting'  sign below the tweet node.


This tells that the tweets are going out to your account.
Login to your Twitter account and you will notice some random (time stamps) in your account.

Do not send too many tweets as it might impact your account and the twitter server.

once, done - reword the different options in the Inject node.

e


Some other options are :