Help Me Solve a Problem

You may find it easier to use the Twitter API rather than trying to parse the incoming emails.

1: Open your text file. Read each name (line) into an array.

2: If you call (using something like CURL) the following URL:

http://twitter.com/statuses/followers.xml?lite=...

You'll get back an XML file which is a LOT easier to parse... loop through it looking for the text then select the text between that point at

3: If the name is found in the array from [1], then move on to the next... If it's NOT in the array, append it to the text file.


Obviously, that would give you a script that could either be run by hand (at the point you wanted to review), or in a crontab job, say at midnight.


I'm not at home at the moment, but if you want to go down this route, let me know, and I'll knock up a quick file that will do it for you.

Mark

Actually, a couple of followup notes to that:

1: I'm using XML rather than JSON because I find it _WAY_ easier to lexically parse in a srcipt for an application like this.

2: In your code, you'll need to add some parameters - your username and password - to the line you call from CURL.

3: If you do it this way, you can just write a mail rule that DELETES the BACN from Twitter :-)

4: If you wanted to be really cute, you could parse the list of followers, then check with twitter whether you'd friended them and not bother writing them to the file if you had. That way, your file would be a "to do" list rather than a "follower archive".

Someone needs to write a 3rd party app to do this with logic in it that the user can modify.

Or, twitter needs to add this as a feature. Kinda like the spam filter in WordPress.

Present me with a list of people that are following me, who I am not following.

Display their following to followers ratio.

Display their URL.

Give me checkboxes.

[ ] Follow
[ ] Don't follow

The let me batch add them...

I'm not sure, but I'm sorta partial to the second to the bottom one :)

Rob,
I'd add you on twitter but I can't find your twitter name on yiur web page.
What is it?
--Steve

Of course, the easiest way to save time with Twitter is to not Twitter at all. I find that saves me oodles of time. :-)

@jay - but then i wouldn't exist!!!

@steve: sorry, it's orangejack.

I need to add that one!

Steve,

Doesn't sound hard at all to put together...

Would you want this as an installable application on your PC, or would you want it as a "hosted service".

If so, would you be happy to type your Twitter username / password into a managed service?

Mark

Mark- I'm evidently not passing who I am and my password. What's the syntax for this?

From an Ubuntu shell:

curl -u chrisbrogan:12345 "http://twitter.com/statuses/followers.xml?lite=true"

Obviously, you'll need to replace "12345" with your own password (unless it IS your password, in which case insert "Spaceballs" quotes of your choice here).

Ah - that line wrapped - the entire thing, starting with 'curl' and ending with 'true"' should be on a single line in the terminal.

Mark,
I'd use it as a hosted service and would enter in my username / password.
--Steve

About 10 minutes ago, @dossy announced his Twitter Karma program. I asked him to add the ability to sort by people who were following me that I wasn't following, and vice versa, and he already updated it for me!

http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/

So you could ignore all that bacn and just run this once a week and add anyone who is following you that you'd like to follow.

Marina, thanks for plugging Twitter Karma! :-)

Chris, I'd like to hear how/if Twitter Karma helps you with your friend/follower management dilemma.

I'll be adding the ability to follow/block folks from Twitter Karma in the next hour or so.

Actually Chris, it's as simple as opening a support ticket in Twitter Help, they can switch a variable in the database on your account to automatically follow anyone who follows you.

They did it for me (took about 24 hours to get a response, not bad at all!) and now I don't have to worry about remembering and catching every 'follow' email that I get.

Does the fact you only started following me on twitter today indicate that you've found a solution :-)

@MarkHarrisonUK

@MarkHarrisonUK - yes, but not the one you are helping me with.

http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/

That worked. : )

"3: If you do it this way, you can just write a mail rule that DELETES the BACN from Twitter :-)"

FYI, you can go into Twitter settings and tell it not to email you when someone new follows you.

off-topic but I'm quite impressed that you're getting up to 60 followers a day on a text-only feed that offers neither nudity nor the promise of nudity.

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