Twitter search in Max

Here’s a basic pattern:

  1. Send search string to Twitter
  2. Get JSON result
  3. Parse result and do something with it.

From Max, there are many ways to do this:

searchtweet – mxj, twitter4j

by Gokce Kinayoglu

http://cycling74.com/toolbox/searchtweet-design-patches-that-respond-to-twitter-posts/

This patch demonstrates the Twitter search API. Its self contained within Max – using the [mxj search tweet] external. This object allows you to input

  •  keyword
  • maximum number of results

The response is:

  • username
  • Tweet text
  • date/time

This patch is a great way to get Tweets into Max. You can use a [metro] object to poll the API. There are no additional programs running outside of Max. 

The limitation is lack of flexibility. You don’t have access to any of the other parameters in the request response. For example, geographic data. Also, it can be difficult to install and maintain java [mxj] programs in Max.

Here’s a screenshot of a patch which takes the output of the above patch and sends it to the aka.speech object – which runs the Mac Os built in text-to-speech program

Thoughts on API’s and Max

After looking at hundreds of API’s over past months – models begin to emerge:

  • Visualization: Looking at data by filtering, analysis, or factors defining movement.
  • Synthesis: producing  feeds from sources, in combination – fusion
  • Transcoding: changing one type of signal into another

Or some combination of all three.

The best tools for getting data in and out of Max:

  • curl (or variants in client libraries)
  • JSON
  • Osc
  • string parsing outside of Max
  • database tools (or data recorder in Max)
  • basic data filtering and scaling tools in Max
  • for complex networked systems: node.js

 

Mashape API’s

https://www.mashape.com

notes

 

 

 

Mashape

An API factory.

https://www.mashape.com

Happened to look at mashape.com again today. Its grown considerably over the past year and now provides access to over 1300 API’s with open source client libraries and Oauth proxies.

Mashape is an API of API’s – a layer of abstraction that standardizes how you consume API’s.

Instructions for using the API: https://www.mashape.com/docs/consume/rest

Here’s an example of a typical API call which gets the weather in San Francisco. Note I have obscured the API-key.

curl -H "X-Mashape-Authorization: YOUR-MASHAPE-KEY" "https://george-vustrey-weather.p.mashape.com/api.php?_method=getForecasts&location=San%20Francisco"

Here’s the result:

[{"day_of_week":"Wed","high":"63","low":"47","condition":"Mostly Clear"},{"day_of_week":"Thu","high":"66","low":"50","condition":"Partly Cloudy"}]

[Note] examples in tkzic/mashape

The API description pages have curl examples.

 

Installing pycurl on Mac Os

notes

update: 11/1/2014 installed version 7.19.5 using easy_install

Here’s the website: http://pycurl.sourceforge.net

It worked. Because xCode was installed?

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" /usr/bin/easy_install setuptools pycurl==7.19.0

Here are instructions, but really all I needed was the above command

http://blog.carlotorniai.net/lion-and-pycurl/

Pycurl examples: http://www.angryobjects.com/2011/10/15/http-with-python-pycurl-by-example/

Local file examples in tkzic/python-api/

There are other Python libs like request, human curl, urllib….

phantomJS

phantomJS runs outside the browser but implements enough of the DOM that you can use it for testing, rendering screenshots, running http: requests, etc.,

http://phantomjs.org/index.html

Have installed locally in: tkzic/phantomjs (binary is in the bin/ folder)