AZImageTweeter

Send images to Twitter using text from Azure Queue Storage

Usage instructions

Setup Azure authentication:

First, as a general rule, you should not store credentials in your code; a better option is to store them in environment variables and retrieve them with os.environ.get('ENV_NAME').

Here's what you'll need for Azure storage authentication:

from azqueuetweeter import storage

sa = storage.Auth(connection_string="CONNECTION-STRING", queue_name="YOUR-QUEUE-NAME")

The connection_string comes from the Azure portal. The queue_name is whatever your named your queue. You can either create that programmatically using the Azure client library, or more easily, using the Azure Storage Explorer app.

Setup Twitter authentication:

You'll need a few more details for Twitter authentication:

from azqueuetweeter import twitter

ta = twitter.Auth(
    consumer_key='CONSUMER-KEY',
    consumer_secret='CONSUMER-SECRET',
    access_token='ACCOUNT-ACCESS-TOKEN',
    access_token_secret='ACCOUNT-ACCESS-TOKEN-SECRET')

The consumer_key is also known as the API key and is provided to you in the Twitter developer portal. Similarly, the consumer_secret is also known as the API secret and is provided in the same place.

The access_token and access_token_secret credentials are for the Twitter account that will actually be the tweet author. If you're sending from the same account as the one that signed up for Twitter API access, then you can get those strings from the Twitter developer portal.If you're sending from a different account, you will need to do 3-legged OAuth to get that account's credentials.

To do 3-legged OAuth, first complete the User authentication set up on the app settings page in the Twitter developer portal. Then use the tweepy package to programmatically go through the flow.

First, get an authorization URL for your app:

>>> oauth1_user_handler = tweepy.OAuth1UserHandler(
    "CONSUMER-KEY", "CONSUMER-SECRET",
    callback="http://pamelafox.github.io"
)
>>> print(oauth1_user_handler.get_authorization_url())
https://api.twitter.com/oauth/authorize?oauth_token=OAUTH-TOKEN

Then visit that URL using the desired account for tweeting, confirm authorization of the app, and see the app redirect to a URL like:

https://registeredwebsite.com/?oauth_token=OAUTH-TOKEN&oauth_verifier=OAUTH_VERIFIER

Put the OAUTH-VERIFIER value into the next call:

access_token, access_token_secret = oauth1_user_handler.get_access_token(
    "OAUTH-VERIFIER"
)

Now you have the access_token and access_token_secret needed for the twitter.Auth constructor above.

Construct a Queue Tweeter

Construct a QueueTweeter using the authentication objects:

from azqueuetweeter import QueueTweeter
qt = QueueTweeter(storage_auth=sa, twitter_auth=ta)

Queue up messages

You can add messages to the Queue either manually with the Azure Storage Explorer app or programmatically using the QueueTweeter.queue_message method.

To queue up a message with a simple string:

qt.queue_message('Hello world!')

You might also find it useful to queue up stringified JSON:

import json
qt.queue_message(json.dumps({"text": "Whats your fav Python web framework?", "poll_options": ["Flask", "Django", "FastAPI", "All of em!"], "poll_duration_minutes": 60*24}))

Later, you can transform your queued messages into tweet content, so you can store the information in the queue however works for you.

Send messages as tweets

Now you can send tweets using the QueueTweeter.send_next_message method.

If the queued message contains exactly the text that you want tweeted, then you can call it with no arguments:

qt.send_next_message()

To confirm the tweet contents first, you can specify preview_mode=True :

qt.send_next_message(preview_mode=True)

To transform the queued message content first, specify a message_transformer function that returns back a dict with the same arguments as tweepy's create_tweet function. The most important argument is "text" but many other arguments are also possible.

This example adds a hashtag to the queued message string:

qt.send_next_message(message_transformer=lambda msg: {"text": msg + " #Python"})

This example deserializes a serialized JSON string message:

import json

qt.queue_message(json.dumps({"text": "Whats your fav Python web framework?", "poll_options": ["Flask", "Django", "FastAPI", "All of em!"], "poll_duration_minutes": 60*24}))
qt.send_next_message(message_transformer=lambda msg: json.loads(msg))

It's also possible to upload an image to the tweet, as long as your Twitter account is approved for "elevated access". Your message_transformer must return the image bytes in a "file" key and provide a filename (with an extension) in the "filename" key..

import io
from PIL import Image

img = Image.open("Python_logo_icon.png")
img_bytes = io.BytesIO()
img.save(img_bytes, format="PNG")
img_bytes.seek(0)

qt.queue_message("I want a stuffed Python logo!")
qt.send_next_message(preview_mode=False, message_transformer=lambda msg: {"text": msg, "filename": "python.jpg", "file": img_bytes})

Development guide

Start a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

Install poetry:

python -m pip install poetry

Install project dependencies:

poetry install