Question

I want to use twitter streaming API in my WPF application, I am able to complete authentication process using OAuth. My problem is I am not aware of the process of fetching tweets from twitter. Can anyone provide me some sample application which can help me understand the proces of fetching and updating tweets.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Reading from the Twitter stream is pretty easy. You just make a request, get the response stream, and start reading. For example:

HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(twitter_search_url);
// this uses password authentication. Change for OAuth
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(TwitterUser, TwitterPassword);
request.KeepAlive = true;
request.UserAgent = user_agent_string;
HttpWebResponse response;
try
{
    response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
    var reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream());
    string line;
    while ((line = reader.ReadLine()) != null)
    {
        // line contains the tweet.
        // parse with a JSON reader
    }
    // end of stream
 }
 catch (... handle exceptions here)
 {
 }
 finally
 {
     response.Close();
 }

The response stream is essentially infinite, so you’ll be stuck in that ReadLine loop forever.

I’ve been using a slightly more complete version of the above code for a couple of years without trouble. The production code has better error handling, of course, and the loop checks a Shutdown event so I can exit it cleanly, but the mechanics of reading the Twitter stream are identical.