Opens a file or connects to the Twitter streaming API, and converts it to a standard JSON format, very similar to the standard Twitter API JSON format. This can be used for development or in a production environment, and allows the case code to be used for both experimental and live testing.

This requires the following packages:

• mirgit.dcs.gla.ac.uk/JamesMcMinn/twitter

Required packages can be installed using go get packagepath

Twitter Stream Reader can be installed using a number of methods.

The easiest method is to simply run main.go using the go run command:

go run main.go

To build the application binary, go build can be used and will generate the binary in your current directory.

go build mirgit.dcs.gla.ac.uk/JamesMcMinn/twitter-stream-reader

The stream reader has 2 modes:

• File Mode: Opens and reads a file, simulating the Twitter gardenhose for testing and development.
• Live Mode: Using a set of specified keys, connect to the Twitter steaming API and read the gardenhose.

The following is a list of parameters used by Twitter Stream Reader.

-ck= Consumer Key
-cs= Consumer Secret
-os= OAuthTokenSecret
-ot= OAuth Token

-if= Input File to read from for File Mode

-port= (Optional) Port to listen on which other applications can connect to. Optional. Default: 8053

Note You will need to generate OAuth keys by visiting http://developer.twitter.com

go run main.go -ck=consumerKey -cs=consumerSecret -ot=OAuthToken -os=OAuthTokenSecret

The file should contain valid JSON, with one Tweet per line. The stream reader will read this file, parse any JSON, and output it in the same format used the Streaming API. In this example, we also use port 85632 rather than the default port or 8053.

go run main.go -if=/home/james/tweets.json -port=85632

Simply connect to the machine where the stream reader is running. To perform a quick test use the Linux nc command, which will output the data it receives:

nc localhost 8053