Build a Twitter Chatbot with PubNub Functions

Disclosure: PubNub, powered by APIs, delivered through global infrastructure, has previously sponsored Hacker Noon.

So you want to create a Twitter bot to interact with your customers automatically. This can be configured and deployed today using PubNub Functions and our Twitter BLOCK.

A Practical Use Case

The Open Growth SDK uses Machine Learning to intelligently get in touch with your customers in realtime. No more email blasts, no more watching leads, no more delay in communication. The instant a customer signs up for your service, they are classified to determine what their needs will be. The Delight Engine automatically reaches out with specific resources for the customer’s likely use case. Outreach is tailor made for each individual.

Open Growth sends that personalized introduction via email, text message, Twitter, and even cake 🍰 ! This guide shows how to configure your company’s Twitter account to post automated @tweets to your customers (following the docs):

• Sign up for a Twitter account, or log into an existing one.
• Sign in and go to the Twitter Application Management Dashboard, click Create New App and fill in all the fields except for Callback URL.
• Click Create Your Twitter Application.
• Go to the Permissions tab an make sure the app’s permissions are set to Read and Write.
• Next, you need grant access and get an OAuth token. You can get the consumer keys and generate the tokens on the Keys and Access Tokens page by clicking the Create my access token button.
• Almost done! You can now use the Twitter BLOCK to Tweet by publishing a PubNub message or REST API call.

Test and Debug

Besides hitting the Create my access token button, you can use PIN-based authorization. You can authorize and also debug using Twurl, a command line tool like Curl, but tailored for Twitter. If you have Ruby installed, you can install Twurl on the command line with:

gem install twurl

• Have your keys ready from the Twitter application’s Keys and Access Tokens tab on the app page.

twurl authorize --consumer-key "Your app’s consumer key" \ --consumer-secret "Your app’s consumer secret"

• A URL will be returned on the command line. Visit that URL in a web browser and a pin will be presented. Enter that pin on the command line and your app’s tokens will be ready for use with Functions.
• Go back to the Keys and Access Tokens page and find your new access tokens.

After you have configured your Twitter app, you can then configure the PubNub Functions event handler. Sign up for PubNub if you haven’t already!

Next we will import the Twitter Function event handler code by clicking on the try it now button here.

Import the code to your one of your PubNub apps by following the Admin Dashboard UI.

Take the 4 secrets from the Twitter app Keys and Access Tokens tab on https://apps.twitter.com/, and put them into your Functions Vault. This can be accessed from the Functions event handler editor, on the left.

Click MY SECRETS and enter your keys and values into the vault following the Twitter event handler code.

Next click the Start Module button on the right, submit a test payload (left), and check your Twitter!

You have enabled automated Tweets! Using the PubNub REST API or any SDK, you can programmatically Tweet!

Originally published at www.pubnub.com.

PubNub, our weekly sponsor, empowers you to build immersive, interactive apps. Chat, maps, dashboards, smart device control — powered by APIs, delivered through global infrastructure.

Learn more about becoming a Hacker Noon weekly sponsor.