Replacement for Twitter RSS API?

Question

I'm currently using Twitter's RSS API (example) to retrieve people's tweets for an app. However, once version 1.1 of their API comes out, I won't be able to do this anymore. What's a simple replacement I can use for this?

Answer 1

Unfortunately the answer is: "There is none."

Twitter continues to lock down their platform, as they have since the switch to OAuth. If you want to add content to Twitter, you can do that easily. If you want to get content out of Twitter, well, you'll have to conform to Twitter's requirements.

RSS was an easy way of getting content out of Twitter, and so they killed it. They'll tell you that it wasn't really used, but that's a load of bull and they know it, but it sounds good and most people will simply swallow it.

There is a workaround that you can use until March 2013:

https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline/UserName.rss

Replace 'UserName' with the actual twitter username you want.

But after sometime in March/April 2013, that will cease to work and you'll have to use OAuth and json to parse Twitter feeds.

Answer 2

Use Twitter RSS - Google Apps Script from github to convert Twitter API 1.1 to RSS. Using this option you can get search results, users' timelines, users’ favorites or even Twitter Lists.

Answer 3

I've put together two mit licensed php scripts and instructions so you can fetch and cache twitter user timelines as RSS..

The most important is to cache the tweets since you are only allowed to call the API 15 times per 15 minutes..

Have a look at twitterrss.net

Answer 4

I've been looking for an answer to this for a while, basically as I wanted to provide a replacement for the Twitter triggers in IFTTT. When IFTTT removed them we could use Twitter's RSS feeds. However now, with v1 of their API retired, you have to authenticate any requests and they no longer off RSS feeds. It's a shame because it's closing the door for a lot of newbie developers out there.

I'd definitely recommend checking out twitter-rss.com in the answer above, but you might want to check out a solution I've come up with. It is called Twools and it's almost ready.

Twools started off as a way to get back RSS feeds from Twitter. Twitter retired version 1 of their API in June 2013 as well as retiring RSS feeds. As well as not having access to RSS feeds, you need to be authenticated to use the API which raises the bar for Twitter users and developers. It has been my intention to make this as easy as possible for you install, however you do need to install this on your own website (PHP is required). It is just a case of editing a few lines in a file (with your Twitter app details) and uploading to your website. Twools offers a number of RSS feeds from the Twitter API:

• Your home timeline
• User timeline (yours or another user's)
• Your mentions
• Your favorites
• List timeline (from a list that you own)
• Direct messages received (disabled by default)
• Direct messages Sent (disabled by default)
• Twitter Search
• New followers
• New friends

You can filter the results from the Twitter API by only outputting tweets containing certain keywords, hashtags or screen names or even by the app used to send the Tweet. As well as that you can filter based on the user (currently their location and language). Finally, you can modify the data outputted in the RSS feed by removing URLs, screen names, hashtags etc or share your recipe with other folders. As well as an RSS feed generator, Twools has a basic direct message spam filter (experimental- use at your own risk!) and a simple social media management tool (basically an HTML version of the RSS filters). You can also keep an eye on your API usage on the Status page.

With Twools and your app you could

• Your tweets when you mention a specific hashtag
• Your Twitter Faves:
• Get new followers from the a certain country or location
• Get tweets when someone mentions Starbucks negatively in a Tweet in the UK
• Get tweets when someone tweets to an article on your website

For more information, see http://twools.it/