twail

twail

twail is inspired by the venerable Unix tail program. twail lets you tail your Twitter timelines, or run a twitter search.

Installation

gem install twail

Setup

Before using twail, you must first get a Twitter API key and authorize the twurl command (note that this is a different command from twail) to access your Twitter account. Type

twurl -T

for instructions.

Usage

twail [timeline]

or 

twail s [max pages] [search args]

Tailing your timelines

The timeline output looks like this:

$ twail home
Logging home timeline at 2011-04-21 11:21:36 -0400
        timoreilly| RT @gumption Americans wildly underestimate income disparity, prefer far greater 
                  | equitability @DanAriely http://bit.ly/gE9v3n
       bcardarella| Amazon is now the single point of failure for the Internet
               RWW| Visa Launches Real-Time, Location-Based Discounts for Gap Customers 
                  | http://rww.to/eK5q8U
        timoreilly| Oops. Seems to be my morning for botching link shortening. Here's the @oreillymedia 
                  | deal of the day link again http://oreil.ly/dHLKR6
          HNTweets| Hipmunk wants you (to run our Android development): http://bit.ly/h095Yz Comments: 
                  | http://bit.ly/fLOAdO
          HNTweets| CSS3 vs. CSS: A Speed Benchmark: http://bit.ly/gOOxvZ Comments: http://bit.ly/hxbRRi
    BostInnovation| MIT Needs Help Finding Dates, According To DateMySchool.com http://bit.ly/gIkO4K
       fixcongress| RT @AlliGerkman WH may require companies bidding for govt contracts to publicly 
                  | disclose cmpgn donations http://bit.ly/e2pRdA #rootstrikers
          sof_ruby| Ruby / Rails: How to identify if the given day, month, and year, combine a legal 
                  | date ?: Given 3 numbers: DD, MM... http://bit.ly/g54YYs
         jpaynerss| A new photo browsing experience in Google Earth http://goo.gl/fb/miiVE
         jpaynerss| More about Google Earth Builder http://goo.gl/fb/VQN2H
          HNTweets| My National Security Letter Gag Order: http://wapo.st/ep0Sh4 Comments: 
                  | http://bit.ly/eVa9Uv
         jonpierce| Moving #StartupDrinks to CBC to accommodate a larger crowd tomorrow. As @evanish 
                  | says, let's think big! See you there? http://t.co/s2Wlwrf
      elwoodicious| RT @Jwarchol: Sometimes you forget how many different sites you have on EC2. This is 
                  | not one of those times.
        rossnelson| RT @neonarcade: Poke is looking for a PHP/MySQL dev for a short term project in NYC. 
                  | Please RT!
      elwoodicious| RT @ShlomoSwidler: RT @Beaker: deploying instances in 2 availability zones costs 
                  | TWICE as much as doing so in 1, so to minimize cost (vs ...
      nickgrossman| RT @Socrative: Socrative won 1st place at the Harvard Grad School of Education 
                  | Bridge Competition. Thanks to organizers and Gates Founda ...
          HNTweets| Incredible Working Factory Made With Lego Robots: http://bit.ly/g5Fzax Comments: 
                  | http://bit.ly/glzdVa
          HNTweets| AWS Outage Reminds Me Of This: 8 Fallacies of Dist. Computing: http://bit.ly/giUX6M 
                  | Comments: http://bit.ly/dIomon

[timeline] can be any of the following:

public 
home 
friends 
user 
mentions 
retweeted_by_me 
retweeted_to_me 
retweets_of_me

The home timeline is the default.

You can use these abbreviations:

p h f u m by to of

In timeline mode, twail works like tail -f. It will print tweets out as they appear in the specified timeline. You can redirect the output however you want. One pipeline I like to use is

twail home | tee -a twitter.home.log

Lots of other pipelines are possible. Knock yourself out. To stop twail, press CTRL-C.

Search for tweets

You can run a Twitter search with twail s [search args].

Search arguments are simply the words you want to submit as your Twitter search query.

twail will print each page of search results as it fetches them and keep going backward in time until the results are exhausted.

To stop fetching results after n pages, use this form:

twail s [n] [search args]

Please note that you want to search for a hashtag, you need to put it in quotes. E.g.,

twail s 1 '#codeforamerica'

The output of twail in search mode looks like this:

$ twail s vitunes itunes
2011-08-02 20:38:03 |      garry_stewart | Via @otaku_jstewart: http://bit.ly/rgfaKw <-- ViTunes: Controlling iTunes from vi/vim
2011-08-02 20:16:29 |              xshay | RT @notahat: If you feel that you don't have enough nerd cred, try driving iTunes from Vim: http://t.co/hFkolMZ
2011-08-02 20:00:08 |           rubygems | vitunes (0.4.6): http://is.gd/1JmVwn Control iTunes with Vim
2011-08-02 19:54:08 |          priyaaank | iTune from vi! Every vi lover's dream. :) http://danielchoi.com/software/vitunes.html
2011-08-02 19:50:02 |               k_ui | Vim で動く iTunes クローンらしい > ViTunes http://bit.ly/o9FGap
2011-08-02 19:47:50 |         hongymagic | RT @jadzor: ViTunes. Yeah, that's right. http://t.co/ZZkIk2T
2011-08-02 19:34:33 |       lindsayevans | RT @jadzor: ViTunes. Yeah, that's right. http://t.co/ZZkIk2T
2011-08-02 19:31:22 |             jadzor | ViTunes. Yeah, that's right. http://t.co/ZZkIk2T
2011-08-02 19:25:13 |          david2777 | Hahaha ViTunes http://t.co/xaGEOli
2011-08-02 19:11:51 |            notahat | If you feel that you don't have enough nerd cred, try driving iTunes from Vim: http://t.co/hFkolMZ
2011-08-02 18:58:38 |            rnewman | RT @boingr: controlling iTunes in vim with http://danielchoi.com/software/vitunes.html
2011-08-02 18:56:30 |           benbelly | For you @edgauthier RT @newsycombinator ViTunes http://j.mp/lSDlBt
2011-08-02 18:50:18 |         pelayo1974 | Applesfera - ViTunes, controla iTunes desde el Terminal http://www.applesfera.com/curiosidades/vitunes-controla-itunes-desde-el-terminal
2011-08-02 18:43:28 |              frigo | RT @msutherl: omg awesome, ViTunes: control iTunes from Vim: http://t.co/iheGoIA
2011-08-02 18:39:10 |         SinnerBOFH | #BOFHers #vim RT @tatai: Igual empiezo a usar iTunes entonces ;) RT @elorz007: @tatai Interfaz de iTunes para vi http://bit.ly/ope5Q7
2011-08-02 18:19:00 |            bgarber | RT @otaviocc: VIM + iTunes = ViTunes http://j.mp/lSDlBt
2011-08-02 18:17:51 |             geyson | RT @otaviocc: VIM + iTunes = ViTunes http://j.mp/lSDlBt
2011-08-02 18:04:30 |             apoena | "@otaviocc: VIM + iTunes = ViTunes http://t.co/CBkWJ6t" isso é oldschool.vou testar hoje.hehe
2011-08-02 17:47:13 |           otaviocc | VIM + iTunes = ViTunes http://j.mp/lSDlBt
2011-08-02 17:44:35 |           spdalton | @danchoi vitunes is amazing. Thank you!
2011-08-02 17:41:21 |         felipebrnd | +1 membro! @taverneiro Wow! RT @newsycombinator ViTunes http://t.co/zeqqMx0
2011-08-02 17:39:59 |               3kwa | @knotty can you control iTunes from XCode? http://bit.ly/kdRLNG :D
2011-08-02 17:38:54 |           spdalton | This is why I use Vim. (via http://t.co/sbqWJ8c) http://t.co/WgH6DGT
2011-08-02 17:29:43 |            ggarron | vitunes http://t.co/dqC1sdq #mac
etc.

If you pipe twail into another command, twail will no longer behave like tail -f, but just like tail. So you can do this

twail m | tail -3 

to see the last three tweets directed at you.

About

If you like twail and you're a Vim user, try twim.

twail was created by Daniel Choi. It's really just a convenience wrapper around the awesome twurl program.

You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/danchoi.