Twitter from the Command Line

This simple but not perfect script will let you twit easily from the command line.

Open a new file with your favorite text editor, and add this:

1
2
3
#!/bin/bash

curl --basic --user USERNAME:PASSWORD \

--data status="$*" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml -o /dev/null;

Save the file as twit (or any other name you choose).

Of course, we don’t like our password inside an accessible plain text file. So this is what I did:

sudo mv twit /usr/local/bin/.

sudo chmod 551 /usr/local/bin/twit

sudo +s /usr/local/bin/twit

sudo chown root /usr/local/bin/twit

Now, only root can read the file, but a regular user can execute it. Maybe my solution is not the best possible, but it works.

Anyway, now, you can use this to twitter from the command line:

twit “This was posted from the command line”

That’s it. Enjoy

This post was based on a post from LinuxJournal.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 Command Line

Brett Dreher says:

Fun tip, finally gave me an excuse to sign up for twitter and give it a shot, thanks

Hi,
My name is Amir Watad. I have a BSc. in biomedical engineering from The Biomedical Engineering school , Technion , Israel, and am currently studying for a BSc. in electrical engineering at The Electrical Engineering school , Technion , Israel.
I work at the verification dept. in Mellanox Technologies Ltd.
I love Linux, the Command Line and the OpenSource Community.
I used to write Poems (Arabic) when I was able to find time for this.

AmirWatad.com