Micro-Star International motherboard with AMD Phenom II 4-core processor.

Defining the Twitter App

Twitter Apps and Credentials

This part of the project is very easy. It's all point and click. It's very obvious once you know where to start.

Sign into Twitter, start creating a new application

Start by signing into Twitter.

Then go to the page apps.twitter.com and click on Create New App.

Start an editor session in a terminal window, you will need to copy and paste a few cryptic strings into there. They're needed for later programming steps.

Signing in to Twitter, creating a new app.

Name and description

Specify a name and a description for the application. This is intended to make it easier for you keep track of things once you have created dozens or hundreds or even thousands of applications.

"My Tweet scheduler" would be fine for both fields here.

Setting the new Twitter application name and description.

Website and Callback URLs

Since we aren't really creating an application for users, the website URL doesn't really matter. Neither does the callback URL list, which I will leave blank.

Click the box to agree to the Twitter Developer Agreement.

Then click the button to create the application.

Setting the Twitter application website and callback URLs, and agreeing to the developer agreement.

Application Details

Congratulations, you have created a Twitter application!

Notice that this page has four tabs, Details, Settings, Keys and Access Tokens, and Permissions. We clicked on the button to create the app on the previous screen, that took us to the Details tab.

Click the Settings tab.

Twitter application details.

Application Settings

Copy and paste the Consumer Key, also called the API Key, into a text file. It's a 25-character mixed-case alphanumeric string. Also paste the name, "API KEY", into place. There are a few of these cryptic strings, you have to keep track of which one is which.

Then scroll back up and click the Permissions tab.

Twitter application settings.

Application Permissions

We want to upload image files and post text status updates. Make sure that access is set to Read and Write.

Then click on the Keys and Access Tokens tab.

Twitter application permissions.

Consumer Key and API Secret

The Consumer Key or API Key appears again on this screen.

Copy and paste the Consumer Secret, also called the API Secret, into a text file along with the Owner ID.

Then scroll further down that page.

Twitter application consumer key and API secret.

Creating the Access Token

Click the button Create my access token.

Creating the access token for a new Twitter application.

Access Token and Access Token Secret

Copy and paste the Access Token and the Access Token Secret into that same small text file.

Twitter application access token and access token secret.

Checklist

You have defined an app within Twitter, and you should have a record of:

Creating the Python Program

Now you're ready to copy and modify my Python program, test it, and deploy it with cron.

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