twig - Twitter Irc Gateway

Twig is an IRC server that reads from the Twitter Streaming API and forwards new tweets to an IRC channel. It is designed to be used by a single user only.

NOTE

As noted under Bugs below, this doesn't work with more than 100 followed users. Since I recently passed that on my own Twitter account, I've switched to Bitlbee and no longer use twig.

Requirements

Twig is written in Python and has no external dependencies other than a JSON library. In Python 2.6 and later, a JSON library already available, but for Python 2.4 or 2.5 you may have to install simplejson.

Configuration

A twig.config.sample sample configuration file is provided. Copy this to twig.config and edit as needed. The "port" value is the local IRC server listening port.

Running

Start twig.py and wait for it to connect to Twitter and print an HTTP server response message. Then, connect to the local IRC server using your IRC client, for example in irssi:

/connect localhost 6969

You will be force-joined to the #twig channel (the only channel on the server) and will start receiving tweets from the people you follow.

Bugs

• More than 100 followed users won't work properly.
• Twitter stream server disconnections may not be handled gracefully.
• Client disconnections are probably equally ungraceful.
• Error handling is terse and often fatal.