bti - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

bti - send a tweet to twitter.com from the command line

SYNOPSIS

bti [--account account] [--password password] [--action action] [--user screenname]
[--host HOST_NAME] [--proxy PROXY:PORT] [--logfile LOGFILE] [--config CONFIGFILE]
[--replyto ID] [--retweet ID] [--page PAGENUMBER] [--bash] [--shrink-urls] [--debug]
[--dry-run] [--verbose] [--version] [--help]

DESCRIPTION

bti sends a tweet message to twitter.com.

OPTIONS

--account account
Specify the twitter.com account name.

--password password
Specify the password of your twitter.com account.

--action action
Specify the action which you want to perform. Valid options are "update" to send a
message, "friends" to see your friends timeline, "public" to track public timeline,
"replies" to see replies to your messages, "user" to see a specific user's timeline
and "direct" to send a direct message to a friend. Default is "update".

--user screenname
Specify the user whose messages you want to see when the action is "user", and the
receiver of the direct message when the action is "direct" (the sender must be
following the receiver).

--host HOST_NAME
Specify the host which you want to send your message to. Valid options are "twitter"
to send to twitter.com.

If no host is specified, the default is to send to twitter.com.

--proxy PROXY:PORT
Specify a http proxy value. This is not a required option, and only needed by systems
that are behind a http proxy.

If --proxy is not specified but the environment variable 'http_proxy' is set the
latter will be used.

--logfile LOGFILE
Specify a logfile for bti to write status messages to. LOGFILE is in relation to the
user's home directory, not an absolute path to a file.

--config CONFIGFILE
Specify a config file for bti to read from. By default, bti looks in the ~/.bti file
for config values. This default location can be overridden by setting a specific file
with this option.

--replyto ID
Status ID of a single post to which you want to create a threaded reply to.

For twitter, this is ignored unless the message starts with the @name of the owner of
the post with the status ID.

For status.net, this can link any two messages into context with each other.
Status.net will also link a message that contains an @name without this without regard
to context.

--retweet ID
Status ID of a single post which you want to retweet.

--shrink-urls
Scans the tweet text for valid URL patterns and passes each through the supplied
bti-shrink-urls script. The script will pass the URL to a web service that shrinks the
URLs, making it more suitable for micro-blogging.

The following URL shrinking services are available: http://2tu.us/ (default) and
http://bit.ly / http://j.mp

See the documentation for bti-shrink-urls for the configuration options.

--debug
Print a whole bunch of debugging messages to stdout.

--page PAGENUMBER
When the action is to retrieve updates, it usually retrieves only one page. If this
option is used, the page number can be specified.

--dry-run
Performs all steps that would normally be done for a given action, but will not
connect to the service to post or retrieve data.

--verbose
Verbose mode. Print status IDs and timestamps.

--bash
Add the working directory and a '$' in the tweet message to help specify it is coming
from a command line. Don't put the working directory and the '$' in the tweet message.

This option implies --background.

--background
Do not report back any errors that might have happened when sending the message, and
send it in the background, returning immediately, allowing the user to continue on.

--version
Print version number.

--help
Print help text.

DESCRIPTION

bti provides an easy way to send tweet messages direct from the command line or any
script. It reads the message on standard input and uses the account and password settings
either from the command line options, or from a config file, to send the message out.

Its primary focus is to allow you to log everything that you type into a bash shell, in a
crazy, "this is what I'm doing right now!" type of way, letting the world follow along
with you constant moving between directories and refreshing your email queue to see if
there's anything interesting going on.

To hook bti up to your bash shell, export the following variable:

PROMPT_COMMAND='history 1 | sed -e "s/^\s*[0-9]*\s*//" | bti --bash'

This example assumes that you have the ~/.bti set up with your account and password
information already in it, otherwise you can specify them as an option.

CONFIGURATION

The account and password can be stored in a configuration file in the users home directory
in a file named .bti. The structure of this file is as follows:

account
The twitter.com account name you wish to use to send this message with.

password
The twitter.com password for the account you wish to use to send this message with.

--action action
Specify the action which you want to perform. Valid options are "update" to send a
message, "friends" to see your friends timeline, "public" to track public timeline,
"replies" to see replies to your messages and "user" to see a specific user's
timeline.

--user screenname
Specify the user you want to see his/her messages while the action is "user".

host
The host you want to use to send the message to. Valid options is "twitter" or
"custom" to specify your own server.

proxy
The http proxy needed to send data out to the Internet.

logfile
The logfile name for bti to write what happened to. This file is relative to the
user's home directory. If this file is not specified here or on the command line, no
logging will be written to the disk.

replyto
The status ID to which all notices will be linked to.

There is no sane reason for a need to have this set in a config file. One such reason
is to have all your messages as children to a particular status.

shrink-urls
Setting this variable to 'true' or 'yes' will enable the URL shrinking feature. This
is equivalent to using the --shrink-urls option.

verbose
Setting this variable to 'true' or 'yes' will enable the verbose mode.

There is an example config file in /usr/share/doc/bti/examples/bti.example that shows the
structure of the file.

Configuration options have the following priority:

command line option

config file option

environment variables

For example, command line options always override any config file option, or any
environment variables. Unless a config file is specified by the command line. At that
point, the new config file is read, and any previous options set by a command line option,
would be overridden.

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