Map a stream of tweets from location

README.md

Map tweets from a place

This is a very simple node-based client demonstrating how you can use the Twitter streaming API with the locations parameter specified. It uses geojson.io to map any tweets it hears within a user-specified duration.

Setup

Before running the map.coffee script, place your app's OAuth keys in keys.json and run npm install to install dependencies (viz., ntwitter and opener).

Usage

You can optionally specify the place from which the tweets should be coming and the time to listen in seconds:

map.coffee [place] [time]

For example, to map tweets coming from Chicago within the next 5 seconds:

map.coffee chicago 5

keys.json

{ "consumer_key": "",
  "consumer_secret": "",
  "access_token_key": "",
  "access_token_secret": "" }

map.coffee

#!/usr/bin/env coffee 
Twitter = require 'ntwitter'
open = require 'opener'
keys = require 'keys'

spot = process.argv[2] or 'chicago' # tweets from which spot?
time = process.argv[3] or 10        # listen for how many secs?

tweet = new Twitter(keys)

geojson = 
  type: "FeatureCollection"
  features: []

# add your own spots of interest here
bbox = 
  chicago:
    locations: '-87,41,-86,42'   
  nashville:
    locations: '-87,35,-85,36.1'
  nyc:
    locations: '-74,40,-73,41'
  bayarea:
    locations: '-122.75,36.8,-121.75,37.8'

# callback to map tweets from the resulting stream
map = (stream) -> 
  setTimeout(stream.destroy, time * 1000)  # disconnect after x seconds
  stream.on 'data', (data) -> 
    if data.coordinates?
      feature =
        type: "Feature"
        geometry: data.coordinates
        properties:
          text: data.text
      geojson.features.push(feature)
  stream.on 'end', -> 
    open 'http://geojson.io/' +
         '#data=data:application/json,' + 
         encodeURIComponent JSON.stringify(geojson)

# map tweets within specified bounding box
tweet.stream('statuses/filter', bbox[spot], map)

package.json

{
  "name": "tweet-map",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "Map tweets from a particular location",
  "keywords": [
    "twitter",
    "stream",
    "geojson"
  ],
  "dependencies": {
    "opener": "1.3.x",
    "ntwitter": "0.5.x",
    "coffee-script": "1.6.3"
  }
}