Twitter Bot Using Python and Heroku

This is a simple template you can use to build a twitter bot using Python and Heroku. I used it to create @RResurgens.

Why build a bot this way?

1. It's quick and easy
2. Heroku provides a ready-to-use environment based on containers that makes it easy to deploy code - smaller learning curve than AWS.
3. I wanted to learn how to pull data using an API, refactor code, and push code to a server (as opposed to just running code locally)

Pre-requisites

To build and use the bot, you'll need to:

1. Create a new Twitter accoun to act as the bot
2. Register for a twitter developer account
3. Create a twitter app. Make sure to give it Read and Write permissions.
4. Set up a Heroku account
5. Intialize git repository in project folder, since Heroku pulls entire projects directly from the working directory of your repository.

How to use

To make your own bot follow these steps:

1. Clone this repository on your local machine
2. Create a virtual environment in your project's root directory: python3 -m venv environment && source environment/bin/activate
3. Install the required libraries using pip: pip install -r requirements.txt
4. Create a file called credentials.py in the root directory of your project. Put your twitter App keys there (and any other keys required for scraping data if needed).
   • MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE 'import credentials' import statement in twitter_bot.py
   • THIS IS JUST FOR TESTING. Once everything is tested and ready to deploy, you'll move these to environment variables.
   • ADD THIS FILE TO THE .gitignore so you're not putting your api keys publicly on github!

ACCESS_TOKEN=<YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN_HERE>
ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=<YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET_HERE>
CONSUMER_KEY=<YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY_HERE>
CONSUMER_SECRET=<YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET_HERE>

5. Make changes in the logic of the bot by modyifing twitter_bot.py
6. Test your changes locally by running python twitter_bot.py from the root directory of your project

How to deploy

Once you are happy with your bot:

1. Add any additional packages you used to requirements.txt
2. Set up Heroku account and install Heroku command line interface
3. Create a basic web server script

from os import environ
from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
app.run(host= '0.0.0.0', port=environ.get('PORT'))

4. Set up a Procfile to tell Heroku what to do with the script and server

web: python server.py
worker: python twitter_bot.py

5. Update twitter_bot.py so that Heroku can find your API credentials. Make sure to include these imports:

import sys
from os import environ

... and update where app retrieves credentials (instead of retrieving from credentials.py file they'll now be served as environment variables from within Heroku dashboard...

consumer_key = environ['API_KEY']
consumer_secret_key = environ['API_SECRET_KEY']
access_token = environ['ACCESS_TOKEN']
access_token_secret = environ['ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET']

6. Commit and push updated files to local main branch of git repository
7. In command line, in project folder, login to Heroku

Heroku login

8. Create app in Heroku from within CLI

heroku create [app-name]

9. Set environmental variables in Heroku dashboard
10. Push local git repository to deploy app

git push heroku main

11. Check Twitter to see if a tweet was sent! You can use Heroku dashboard to check logs, troubleshoot, and add additional functionality like scheduling. HAVE FUN!

Limitations

Read this before using the bot:

Future Work

1. Refactoring into python package
2. Deploy using Docker and AWS

References

*I started this project using this repository as a template from Dylan Castillo: https://github.com/dylanjcastillo/twitter-bot-python-aws-lambda before deciding to switch to the Heroku build based on tasks I needed to learn for work.

*Weather data is pulled from OpenWeather

*How to Set up a Twitter Bot with Python and Heroku

*How to Make a Twitter Bot in Python With Tweepy

*Build and Deploy Twitter Bots with Python, Tweepy and PythonAnywhere

*Making a Quote Tweeting Twitter Bot with Python, Tweepy, and Heroku.