twitter-api-v2

What is twitter-api-v2?

The twitter-api-v2 npm package is a comprehensive library for interacting with the Twitter API v2. It allows developers to perform a wide range of actions such as posting tweets, retrieving user information, managing direct messages, and more. The package is designed to be easy to use and supports both REST and streaming APIs.

What are twitter-api-v2's main functionalities?

Posting a Tweet

This feature allows you to post a tweet to your Twitter account. The code sample demonstrates how to initialize the TwitterApi client with an access token and post a tweet saying 'Hello, world!'.

const { TwitterApi } = require('twitter-api-v2');
const client = new TwitterApi('YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN');

async function postTweet() {
  const tweet = await client.v2.tweet('Hello, world!');
  console.log(tweet);
}

postTweet();

Fetching User Information

This feature allows you to fetch information about a specific Twitter user by their username. The code sample shows how to retrieve and log the user information for the 'TwitterDev' account.

const { TwitterApi } = require('twitter-api-v2');
const client = new TwitterApi('YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN');

async function getUserInfo() {
  const user = await client.v2.userByUsername('TwitterDev');
  console.log(user);
}

getUserInfo();

Streaming Tweets

This feature allows you to stream tweets in real-time based on certain criteria. The code sample demonstrates how to set up a stream to listen for tweets and log the tweet data as it comes in.

const { TwitterApi } = require('twitter-api-v2');
const client = new TwitterApi('YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN');

async function streamTweets() {
  const stream = await client.v2.searchStream({ 'tweet.fields': ['author_id'] });
  for await (const { data } of stream) {
    console.log(data);
  }
}

streamTweets();

Other packages similar to twitter-api-v2

twit

The 'twit' package is another popular library for interacting with the Twitter API. It supports both REST and streaming APIs, similar to twitter-api-v2. However, 'twit' is designed for the older Twitter API v1.1, whereas twitter-api-v2 is specifically for the newer API v2.

twitter-lite

The 'twitter-lite' package is a lightweight alternative for interacting with the Twitter API. It supports both REST and streaming APIs and is designed to be minimalistic and efficient. While it can be used with both API v1.1 and v2, it may lack some of the more advanced features and ease of use provided by twitter-api-v2.

node-twitter-api

The 'node-twitter-api' package provides a simple interface for interacting with the Twitter API. It supports basic functionalities such as posting tweets and fetching user information. However, it is less comprehensive and may not support all the features available in twitter-api-v2.

README

Twitter API v2

Strongly typed, full-featured, light, versatile yet powerful Twitter API v1.1 and v2 client for Node.js.

Main maintainer: @alkihis -

Important Note

Twitter will significantly reduce its API capabilities by end of April (see this thread).

This change has major implications, and as a result, this library may no longer be maintained.

We are disappointed and discouraged by the recent turn of events at Twitter since the takeover by Elon Musk. We are saddened to see that much of the hard work of the past few years on the API, led by an amazing team including @andypiper, has been shelved.

For a more detailed explanation, please see this discussion.

Highlights

✅ Ready for v2 and good ol' v1.1 Twitter API

✅ Light: No dependencies, 23kb minified+gzipped

✅ Bundled types for request parameters and responses

✅ Streaming support

✅ Pagination utils

✅ User-context authentication with OAuth2

✅ Media upload helpers

How to use

Install it through your favorite package manager:

yarn add twitter-api-v2
# or
npm i twitter-api-v2

Here's a quick example of usage:

import { TwitterApi } from 'twitter-api-v2';

// Instantiate with desired auth type (here's Bearer v2 auth)
const twitterClient = new TwitterApi('<YOUR_APP_USER_TOKEN>');

// Tell typescript it's a readonly app
const readOnlyClient = twitterClient.readOnly;

// Play with the built in methods
const user = await readOnlyClient.v2.userByUsername('plhery');
await twitterClient.v2.tweet('Hello, this is a test.');
// You can upload media easily!
await twitterClient.v1.uploadMedia('./big-buck-bunny.mp4');

Why?

Sometimes, you just want to quickly bootstrap an application using the Twitter API. Even though there are a lot of libraries available on the JavaScript ecosystem, they usually just provide wrappers around HTTP methods, and some of them are bloated with many dependencies.

twitter-api-v2 is meant to provide full endpoint wrapping, from method name to response data, using descriptive typings for read/write/DMs rights, request parameters and response payload.

A small feature comparison with other libs:

Package	API version(s)	Response typings	Media helpers	Pagination	Subdeps	Size (gzip)	Install size
twitter-api-v2	v1.1, v2, labs, ads	✅	✅	✅	0	~23 kB
twit	v1.1	❌	✅	❌	51	~214.5 kB
twitter	v1.1	❌	❌	❌	50	~182.1 kB
twitter-lite	v1.1, v2	❌	❌	❌	4	~5.3 kB
twitter-v2	v2	❌	❌	❌	7	~4.5 kB

Features

Here's everything twitter-api-v2 can do:

Basics:

• Support for v1.1 and v2 of Twitter API
• Make signed HTTP requests to Twitter with every auth type: OAuth 1.0a, OAuth2 (even brand new user context OAuth2!) and Basic HTTP Authorization
• Helpers for numerous HTTP request methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and PATCH), that handle query string parse & format, automatic body formatting and more
• High-class support for stream endpoints, with easy data consumption and auto-reconnect on stream errors

Request helpers:

• Automatic paginator for endpoints like user and tweet timelines, allowing payload consumption with modern asynchronous iterators until your rate-limit is hit
• Convenient methods for authentication - generate auth links and ask for tokens to your users
• Media upload with API v1.1, including long video & subtitles support, automatic media type detection, chunked upload and support for concurrent uploads
• Dedicated methods that wraps API v1.1 & v2 endpoints, with typed arguments and fully typed responses
• Typed errors, meaningful error messages, error enumerations for both v1.1 and v2

Type-safe first:

• Typings for tweet, user, media entities (and more) are bundled!
• Type-safe wrapping of dedicated methods in 3 right level: DM/Read-write/Read-only (just like Twitter API do!) - you can declare a read-only client - you will only see the methods associated with read-only endpoints

And last but not least, fully powered by native Promises.

Documentation

Learn how to use the full potential of twitter-api-v2.

• Get started
  • Create a client and make your first request
  • Handle Twitter authentication flows
  • Explore some examples
  • Use and create plugins
• Use endpoints wrappers — ensure typings of request & response
  • Available endpoint wrappers for v1.1 API
  • Available endpoint wrappers for v2 API
  • Use Twitter streaming endpoints (v1.1 & v2)
• Deep diving into requests
  • Use direct HTTP-method wrappers
  • Use rate limit helpers
  • Handle errors
  • Master twitter-api-v2 paginators
  • Discover available helpers

Plugins

Official plugins for twitter-api-v2:

• @twitter-api-v2/plugin-token-refresher: Handle OAuth 2.0 (user-context) token refreshing for you
• @twitter-api-v2/plugin-rate-limit: Access and store automatically rate limit data
• @twitter-api-v2/plugin-cache-redis: Store responses in a Redis store and serve cached responses

See how to use plugins here.