twitterApp

DESCRIPTION:

The Twitter App retrieves a user's tweets via the Twitter API and returns stats on their Twitter activities. It stores the user's API keys for future use.

TECHNOLOGIES USED:

• Apache Server (version 2.4.29)
• Python 2.7 with the following modules installed: requests, requests_oauthlib, pytz
• Twitter API

GENERAL OVERVIEW:

• redirects user to Twitter authorization page and collects keys to access user data
• retrieves and analyses user data
• displays:
  • total number of tweets collected
  • number of tweets, retweets, replies
  • 10 people the user retweets the most
  • 10 people the user replies to the most
  • 5 people the user mentions the most
  • 10 hashtags the user uses the most
  • time of day and day of week the user is most active
• saves .json file with tweets and .txt file with api keys for future use

PROGRAM FLOW:

(01) Homepage user clicks "login with Twitter"
[index.html]
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(02)	user redirected to Twitter login/authorize app page.
If user is already logged in, he is directed to authorization page
[twitterApp.cgi]
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(03)	following twitter login/authorization
user is redirected to TwitterApp
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(04)	TwitterApp collects and analyses
user tweets.
[twitterApp.cgi, collectTweets.py, generateStats.py]
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User has tweets?
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________________|_______________
| | | | YES NO
(05)	Results page displayed No Tweets page displayed	(06)
[twitterApp.cgi, [twitterApp.cgi,
generateGraphs.py] noTweets.html]

APP SOURCE STRUCTURE:

/www/default/docs/twitterApp/	index.html [Initial Page]
twitterApp.cgi [Manages oauth flow and calls functions that analyze and display data]
collectTweets.py	[Retrieves tweets data from Twitter API, writes data to file]
generateStats.py	[Analyses twitter data, returns raw data and some HTML]
generateGraphs.py	[Generate graphs, returns HTML for results page, saves HTML to debug file]
noTweets.html [Result page if the user has 0 tweets]
/www/default/docs/twitterApp/css/indexStyle.css [External style sheet for index.html and noTweets.html]
piechart.css [External style sheet for javascript charts]
style.css [External style sheet for results page]
/www/default/docs/twitterApp/js/chartjs/Chart.bundle.js [js for charts]
utils.js	[js for charts]
/www/default/docs/twitterApp/json [json files will be stored here] **> This directory has to be created before running app on a new server. It has to be owned by the web server.
/www/default/docs/twitterApp/kdata [Twitter API keys will be stored here] **> This directory has to be created before running app on a new server. It has to be owned by the web server.
/www/default/docs/twitterApp/debug [debug files will be stored here] **> This directory has to be created before running app on a new server. It has to be owned by the web server.

TWITTER API:

The Twitter API is used to collect user twitter keys and tweets. To use the Twitter API the app must first be registered with Twitter. Once the app is registered, Twitter will provide the Consumer Keys and Consumer Secret for the application. The keys used in developing this app are hardcoded in the file twitterApp.cgi.

VARIABLES:

The following variables are hardcoded and in a second version should be placed in a config file:

File: twitterApp.cgi	Variables: hostname
pathToAppDir
client_key
client_secret
callback_uri

Variables that might need to be reviewed if the directory structure changes:

File: twitterApp.cgi	Variables: keyToFile
jsonFileName
File: generateGraphs.py Variables: debugFile

Variables that might need to be reviewed if the Twitter API updates its endpoints:

File: twitterApp.cgi	Variables: request_token_url
authorization_url
access_token_url settings_url
File: collectTweets.py	Variables: tweets_url

LANGUAGE DIRECTION:

The app is configured to display text in both right-to-left and left-to-right directions, enabling it to display text in languages such as Hebrew and Arabic. In css/style.css:

dir: "auto";

Character encoding is 'Unicode', enabling it to handle multiple languages. In generateGraphs.py:

<meta charset="UTF-8">