#BoxKite.Twitter

BoxKite.Twitter is a .NET Library that provides an interface to the Twitter API 1.1, licensed MS-PL.

Supporting Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Universal Apps, iOS (Mono/Xamarin) and .NET 4.5 Portable Class Libaries; it uses modern .NET development mechanisms async/await and Reactive Extensions.

Questions? You can find me on Twitter, of course! @RealNickHodge

@ghuntley has a great BoxKite.Twitter examples here

##CI Build Status ###NB: I am still working on CI with appveyor :-)

Version 2.2.x Changes:

• Thanks to @vikingcode, new extended_entities are added to the Twitter object. This is in preparation for Twitter's addition of video to their supported media types As this is yet to be widely used, expect some fixes!
• Added various other edge/new APIs (GetConfiguration) with appropriate tests

Version 2.1 Changes:

• Many areas of code cleanup, with some property/model name changes
• If SearchStream/UserStream disconnects; will try a reconnect (automatically)

Version 2.0.x-pre Implements/Changes:

• Both Twitter's Application Authentication and User Authentication supported.
• REST APIs mapped to Application/User Authentication as based on Twitter documentation
• iOS and Android build (via Mono/Xamarin)
• TwitterConnection method naming changes (verb/noun, more sensible)
• a couple of new Twitter REST API endpoints added eg: status/retweeters
• Removal of Json <dynamic> use (had only been used in three places in 1.x series)
• Based on Paul Bett's recommendation to remove Message Buses from reactive style apps, I surgically removed Brendan's Reactive.EventAggregator. Sorry, dude
• .NET API naming conventions (I strongly recommend you watch Designing Wonderful .NET APIs from NDC 2014)
• various small bugs crushed

Plans for 2.3 Release

• cleanup with <Func> work in Backfills
• better state machine for connect/disconnect eg: in mobile environments
• change to BoxKiteTwitter exception handling from "inline" (what a stupid idea that was) errors

Version 1.5.x Implements:

• start of Application-only Authentication via OAuth2
• this is going to require some rework in the API to permit App-level API access (pull user timelines, friends of account, list resources, search in tweets etc) without a user login.

Version 1.4.x Implements:

• Getting/Setting Profile Banners (added to twitter API 21st April 2014)

await session.GetProfileBanners(screen_name:"realnickhodge");
await session.ChangeProfileBanner("boxkite1500x500", fs);

• User now contains Profile Banner URL, if turned on by the user (thanks Paul!)

Version 1.3.x Fixes/Implements:

• Universal App support
• Roll in Reactive.EventAggregator into BoxKite.Twitter itself because @shiftkey

Version 1.2.x Fixes/Implements:

• As per Twitter List IDs moving to 64 bits in early 2014
• TwitterConnection is the central "entry point" to BoxKite.Twitter
• VS2013 build
• IStreamEvent work to abstract messages from the UserStream
• various other fixes

1.0.6 (and 1.0.5) Fixes/Implements:

• Adding support for latest Portable HTTPClient
• Adding more Rx in many places to make life easier
• Fixed bug where gzip compression on the HTTP Stream (for userstreams) didn't flush tweets from the server-side.
• various small bugs found in tweet backfills, found when testing with a fresh account

1.0.4 Fixes/Implements:

• As per Twitter: User IDs moving to 64 bits later in 2013
• Note: Using .NET long to hold user_id
• Note: this impacts any downstream client expecting plain old 32 bit ints
• FriendlyDateTimeString now says "Just Now" rather than "in 13 seconds" when user's device clock has drifted forward from correct internet time.

At the present time, BoxKite.Twitter supports API version 1.1 of the following:

• Twitter 1.1 REST API
• User and Application authentication
• User streams
• Search streams

##NuGet Package

BoxKite.Twitter listing on NuGet

Install-Package BoxKite.Twitter

##So What Does the Code look like?

Pop into the wiki to see code examples

Documentation is online and provided in the Wiki

• More indepth developer details are documented here
• There are a few, small missing pieces documented here
• 53 "Live Fire" tests are explained here
• Sample, Simple WPF/XAML 4.5 Client App
• Note: Sample apps in various stages of incompleteness; will be in a separate repo

##To Build:

• Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 with latest NuGet supporting PCLs (Portable Class Libraries) and Universal libraries
• Solution is Visual Studio 2013 Update 4, but code should work and build in VS2012
• Uses Xamarin Studio 5.5.4 (or later) for Android and iOS builds

##Where you can help out

• Modeling the API to make sense for more developers than me
• Additional harness for Reactive hook up
• Stronger "this works on non-Microsoft .NET platforms" live testing and experience
• Always more Documentation, of course

##API Coverage, With Tests & Intellisense Comments From Twitter REST API v1.1

• Timelines
• Tweets
• status/update_with_media
• Search
• Saved Searches
• User Streaming: GET userstreams
• Search via Streaming POST status/filter
• Direct Messages
• Friends and Followers
• Users
• Suggested Users
• Favorites
• Lists
• Places and Geo
• Trends
• Spam Reporting
• oauth
• API rate limits

##Tests:

• 124 test methods with average of 4 assertion tests each
• Both Twitter API 1.1 and Userstream Unit Tests
• 53 "Live Fire Tests" (Live integration tests) Included as a separate project, it is engaged via the Console; uses a real Twitter Account to exercise the API. Configurable Test series, individual tests that can be run.
• Test source is JSON from dev.twitter.com and where innaccurate on the site, taken from live data or corrected to match live data.
• Error response type testing (eg: 429 rate_limits) & generic decode tests included

• Without Newtonsoft Json.NET this library would not exist (MIT License)
• Microsoft's Open sourced .NET Reactive Extensions (Apache License 2.0)
• Portable version of the HTTP Client Libraries, 2.2.x from the Microsoft ASP.NET WebAPI team HTTP Client Libraries (sourced from NuGet, currently Licensed under DotNetBetaUnsupported license)

• Great little collection of extension methods that make writing UnitTests easier FluentAssertions (MS-PL)

##Copyright, License Information

BoxKite.Twitter was started by Brendan Forster (https://github.com/shiftkey/) as a part of a larger Twitter project now on permanent hiatus.

BoxKite.Twitter is Licensed under: MS-PL

Copyright: Nick Hodge and Brendan Forster 2012-2015

BoxKite Logo is Copyright 2012 Nick Hodge

Everyone likes flying kites, right? The original inventor of the box kite was Lawrence Hargrave. In 1893. And he was an Australian. Sadly missing from our newer plastic yet colourful currency, Lawrence was one of those guys who helped manned flight become a reality.

And keeping with the Twitter bird theme, flying and airborne I created a fork of the MahTweets twitter client in late 2011 and named it MahTweets Lawrence Hargrave.

In mid 2012, Brendan needed a code name for a new Twitter "thing" he was working on. Keeping in this flighty theme, I named his app "BoxKite". For posterity's sake, I have absconded with Brendan's code, and my contributed codename (and a nifty icon) and have dubbed this project BoxKite.