curl --basic --user username:password --data status="Having fun with cURL" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml


The command ‘curl’ is normally present on most Linux distro’s these days. Windows users will need to Google and download it. To use the code above simply replace ‘username:password’ with your real ‘username:password‘, the string of status in double quotes is the update that will actually appear on your Twitter page. The url present at the end of the code is the Twitter API endpoint.

Twitter will reply with a response similar to the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<status>
<created_at>Sun Apr 08 01:25:56 +0000 2007</created_at>
<id>12345xxx</id>
<text>Having fun with cURL</text>
<user>
<id>xxxxxxx</id>
<name>Your Name</name>
<screen_name>your_username</screen_name>
<location></location>
<description></description>
<profile_image_url>[removed]</profile_image_url>
<url></url>
<protected>true</protected>
</user>
</status>

Note: I have replaced specific numbers with ‘x’s.

Finally the digg link, (should be close to 1000 diggs) on the front page tempted me to try an interactive hands-on demo. Its too simple, easy and fast. I’m going to test-drive rails soon on a small application and see whether it shapes up to the endless hype floating around. I might even end up hooked. Time is money, simple is good.

read more | digg story

read more | digg story