You may have already read my how-to on integrating Twitter and Growl but this is the upgrade! I will go through the code for those interested, please help me improve the code by leaving a comment, good or bad.

I have some quite ambitious plans for this project, but this is not the time to bore you with promises, so vaporware it will remain – for now.

I’d like to start by thanking everyone who has commented on this project so far – it’s been such a big help, keep them coming.

What’s new?

If you can’t see a feature you requested its not because I am ignoring it, it’s simply I haven’t got round to it or it been superseded. As alway comments will always be read so you can always bug me there.

1. Profile images now supported

2. Run in the background and optionally use launchd

3. Sticky notifications for selected users

4. Loads more command line options

Bugs Fixed

UTF-8 encoding issue.

Download

Download here. Remember you’ll need some command line experience. See an example launchd plist file here.

Install

Installation is relatively simple, you will need to install some Perl modules, refer to the previous post for details.

Running

NB: I have split this command for ease of readability.

$ ./trowel -u <<EMAIL>> -p <<PASSOWRD>> -vv \

-I guykawasaki,twitter,stephenfry,rjstelling,macrumors,2009show \

-t twitter,stephenfry,rjstelling

-I tells the script what to notify you about

-t makes the notification sticky

Know Issues

There does seem to be an issues when running in launcd mode where Tweets are duplicated, any testing and info you can supply on this bug will help no end.

Documentation 

NAME
		trowel - display Twitter messages with Growl.

SYSOPSIS
		trowel -u -p [options]

EXAMPLES
		trowel -u <username> -p <password> -i 5 -l 180 -f "%t %d" \

		-t twitter,stephenfry,rjstelling \

		-I guykawasaki,twitter,stephenfry,rjstelling

OPTIONS
		-u, --username
			Twitter username

		-p, --password
			Twitter passord, if omitted it will be 

		 	requested interactively

		-i
			interval between displaying tweets

		-l, --poll
			time between polls of Twitter feed

		-x, --exclude
			list of users to exclude

		-t, --sticky
			list of users who's tweets are sticky, 

			-x and -i will override this

		-I, --include
			list of users to include

		-o
			output to STDOUT only, by-passing Growl,

			 use this for piping to another application

		-n
			initial number of Tweets to request, default is 5 

		-f "<format>"
			format of the Tweet
				%u - user
				%t - tweet
				%d - date time
				%l - location

		-g, --config
			a configuration file that sets command line 

			parameters, this function is not implemented

		-h, --help
			show this help 

		-v
			verbose mode

		-vv
			very verbose mode

		-vvv
			debug verbose mode

THIS POST HAS BEEN SUPERSEDED BY Twitter + Growl = Trowel v1.0

OK, so I’m new to Twitter. I didn’t (don’t) get it. Who wants to know what I’m doing? Well as I keep telling myself thats not the point. The point is to spread information, I had a lot of fun on Election night tweeting away about the coverage and calling states (I was surprisingly accurate).

The one thing that did annoy me was it added another website to check – not just a lunch but a refresh every 5 minutes. Something had to be done.

For anyone who has Adium installed on their Mac, you will be aware of Growl it’s a notification system that has yet to reach it’s full potential. As with background messages I wanted my incoming Tweets to be shown in small unobtrusive transparent bubble.

To cut a long story short – I couldn’t find anything. I found a few Ruby scripts (that didn’t work), I tried some nice applications but I didn’t want to run another app I wanted Growl!

So an hour or 2 or Googling and research for scripts I found some Perl modules that I could combine to produce the desired output.

My steps and code are listed below, its not 100% fool proof – please leave comments on how I can improve it.

1. Installing the Modules

You will need only 3 modules Mac::Growl, Net::Twitter and Date::Format, if your lucky Date::Format might even be already installed. Type the following commands into terminal.

$ sudo perl -MCPAN -e shell

This will launch a CPAN command line session to install the modules type (at the prompt):

> install Mac::Growl

Agree to any dependancies, when it done type:

> install Net::Twitter

Again agree to all dependancies, and lastly:

> install Date::Format

> exit

If you had any problems it may be because You need Apple’s Development tools installed, these are a free download form Apple. Please leave any problems in the comments.

2. Coding

Now for the code, just copy the following into a empty text file and save as some thing sensible like growl_tweet.pl:

#! /usr/bin/perl -wT

use Mac::Growl ':all';
use Net::Twitter;
use Date::Format;

my $app    = 'Growl/Twitter';
my @names  = ('New Tweet');

RegisterNotifications($app, \@names, [$names[0]]);

my $tweet = Net::Twitter->new( username=>'##REPLACE WITH USERNAME##', password=>'##REPLACE WITH PASSWORD##' );

my $last_id = undef;
my $switch = 0;

while(1)
{
 my @tt = ();

 if($last_id)
 {
 @tt = $tweet->friends_timeline({count => 200, since_id => $last_id });
 }
 else
 {
 @tt = $tweet->friends_timeline({count => 5 });
 }

 foreach my $t (@{$tt[0]})
 {
 if(!$switch) { $last_id = $t->{id}; $switch++; };

 PostNotification($app, $names[0], $t->{user}{screen_name}, $t->{text});

 printf("%s: %s\n", $t->{user}{screen_name}, $t->{text});

 print "sleep 4\n";

 sleep(4);
 }

 $switch = 0;

 print "sleep 37\n";
 sleep(37);
}

exit;

3. Running

Now, simply run the script:

$ perl ./growl_tweet.pl

And bingo! All your tweets appear! Leave a comment if it works and especially if it doesn’t – if there is enough interest I might consider adding features and real installer!

4. Here’s one I made earlier

If you would like the code, you can down load it here (with out any formatting issues).

http://www.echo-technology.co.uk/development/twitter+growl/growl.pl.txt