Twitter API with node.js, get a list of followers

Mowso
July 30, 2017
168 views
3 votes
3 Answers

Hi I’m currently working on a Twitter bot with the Twitter API and Node.JS. I want the bot to return all of my followers and some of their features in an javascript object. Something like :

{[‘id’, ‘screen_name’, ‘name’, ‘screen_name’, ‘followers_count’,
‘friends_count’]}

RN my code is :

var Twitter = new TwitterPackage(config);


var options = 
              {
                screen_name: 'mowsolicious',
              };

Twitter.get('followers/ids', options,  function (err, data) {    // returns a list of ids
  var nbFollowers = data.ids.length
  var id = []
  console.log(nbFollowers)                                       // how many followers I have
  for (i=0 ; i <= nbFollowers ; i++) {
    ids = data.ids
    var id = ids[i]
    Twitter.get('users/show/' + id, function(err, data)  {    
      console.log(id + " - " + data.name + " - " + data.screen_name + " - " + data.followers_count + " - " + data.friends_count)
    })
  }
})

I’m pretty sure something is terribly wrong with my method (more precisely when I put the Twitter.get thing in the loop) and it returns a bunch of undefined in the console.

I tried to work with the API doc but I’m experiencing some troubles understanding it. If someone could help that would be great.

Thank you

Answers

Most likely, you get undefined because the user is not found :

[ { code: 50, message: 'User not found.' } ]

Checking err variable would take care of that. But looking at GET followers/id documentation, you should use GET users/lookup to efficiently request mutliple user objects (up to 100 user per request with user id delimited by comma)

Also, I assume you’d like a unique callback to be called when all requests are completed, using Promises will take care of that :

var res_array = [];

function getUserInfo(id_list) {
    return Twitter.get('users/lookup', {
            "user_id": id_list
        }).then(function(data) {
            res_array.push(data);
        })
        .catch(function(error) {
            throw error;
        })
}

Twitter.get('followers/ids', function(err, data) {

    if (err) {
        console.log(err);
        return;
    }

    console.log("total followers : " + data.ids.length);

    var requestNum = Math.floor(data.ids.length / 100);
    var remainder = data.ids.length % 100;

    var promises_arr = [];

    for (var i = 0; i < requestNum; i++) {
        promises_arr.push(getUserInfo(data.ids.slice(i * 100, i * 100 + 100).join(",")));
    }
    if (remainder != 0) {
        promises_arr.push(getUserInfo(data.ids.slice(requestNum * 100, requestNum * 100 + 100).join(",")));
    }

    Promise.all(promises_arr)
        .then(function() {
            for (var i in res_array) {
                for (var j in res_array[i]) {
                    var user = res_array[i][j];
                    console.log(user.id + " - " +
                        user.name + " - " +
                        user.screen_name + " - " +
                        user.followers_count + " - " +
                        user.friends_count)
                }
            }
        })
        .catch(console.error);
})

List of followers can be retrieved with superface sdk , try it based on the example below

npm install @superfaceai/one-sdk
npx @superfaceai/cli install social-media/followers

const { SuperfaceClient } = require('@superfaceai/one-sdk');

const sdk = new SuperfaceClient();

async function run() {
  // Load the installed profile
  const profile = await sdk.getProfile('social-media/followers');

  // Use the profile
  const result = await profile
    .getUseCase('GetFollowers')
    .perform({
      profileId: '429238130'
    });

  return result.unwrap();
}

run();

This works pretty fine


import fetch from 'node-fetch'

async function getFollowers(username) {

  const response = await fetch(`https://api.twitter.com/1.1/followers/list.json?screen_name=${username}`, {
    headers: {
      Authorization: `Bearer ${<yourbearertoken>}`
    }
  });

  // Parse the response as JSON
  const data = await response.json();
  return data.users;
}

const followers = await getFollowers("<username>");

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