Simple (Twitter + Streaming API + Java + OAuth) example

In my quest to create a simple Java program to extract tweets from Twitter’s streaming API, I have modified this (http://cotdp.com/dl/TwitterConsumer.java) code snippet to work with the OAuth method. The result is the below code, which when executed, throws a Connection Refused Exception.

I am aware of Twitter4J however I want to create a program that relies least on other APIs.

I have done my research and it looks like the oauth.signpost library is suitable for Twitter’s streaming API. I have also ensured my authentication details are correct. My Twitter Access level is ‘Read-only’.

I couldn’t find a simple Java example that shows how to use the streaming API without relying on e.g. Twitter4j.

    import java.io.BufferedReader;
    import java.io.File;
    import java.io.FileWriter;
    import java.io.IOException;
    import java.io.InputStreamReader;
    
    import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
    import org.apache.http.auth.AuthScope;
    import org.apache.http.auth.UsernamePasswordCredentials;
    import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpGet;
    import org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultHttpClient;
    
    import oauth.signpost.OAuthConsumer;
    import oauth.signpost.commonshttp.CommonsHttpOAuthConsumer;
    
    /**
     * A hacky little class illustrating how to receive and store Twitter streams
     * for later analysis, requires Apache Commons HTTP Client 4+. Stores the data
     * in 64MB long JSON files.
     * 
     * Usage:
     * 
     * TwitterConsumer t = new TwitterConsumer("username", "password",
     *      "http://stream.twitter.com/1/statuses/sample.json", "sample");
     * t.start();
     */
    public class TwitterConsumer extends Thread {
        //
        static String STORAGE_DIR = "/tmp";
        static long BYTES_PER_FILE = 64 * 1024 * 1024;
        //
        public long Messages = 0;
        public long Bytes = 0;
        public long Timestamp = 0;
        
        private String accessToken = "";
        private String accessSecret = "";
        private String consumerKey = "";
        private String consumerSecret = ""; 
          
        private String feedUrl;
        private String filePrefix;
        boolean isRunning = true;
        File file = null;
        FileWriter fw = null;
        long bytesWritten = 0;
        
        public static void main(String[] args) {
            TwitterConsumer t = new TwitterConsumer(
                "XXX", 
                "XXX",
                "XXX",
                "XXX",
                "http://stream.twitter.com/1/statuses/sample.json", "sample");
            t.start();
        }
    
        public TwitterConsumer(String accessToken, String accessSecret, String consumerKey, String consumerSecret, String url, String prefix) {
            this.accessToken = accessToken;
            this.accessSecret = accessSecret;
            this.consumerKey = consumerKey;
            this.consumerSecret = consumerSecret;
            feedUrl = url;
            filePrefix = prefix;
            Timestamp = System.currentTimeMillis();
        }
    
        /**
         * @throws IOException
         */
        private void rotateFile() throws IOException {
            // Handle the existing file
            if (fw != null)
                fw.close();
            // Create the next file
            file = new File(STORAGE_DIR, filePrefix + "-"
                    + System.currentTimeMillis() + ".json");
            bytesWritten = 0;
            fw = new FileWriter(file);
            System.out.println("Writing to " + file.getAbsolutePath());
        }
    
        /**
         * @see java.lang.Thread#run()
         */
        public void run() {
            // Open the initial file
            try { rotateFile(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); return; }
            // Run loop
            while (isRunning) {
                try {
                
                    OAuthConsumer consumer = new CommonsHttpOAuthConsumer(consumerKey, consumerSecret);
                    consumer.setTokenWithSecret(accessToken, accessSecret);
                    HttpGet request = new HttpGet(feedUrl);
                    consumer.sign(request);
                
                    DefaultHttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
                    HttpResponse response = client.execute(request);
                    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(
                            new InputStreamReader(response.getEntity().getContent()));
                    while (true) {
                        String line = reader.readLine();
                        if (line == null)
                            break;
                        if (line.length() > 0) {
                            if (bytesWritten + line.length() + 1 > BYTES_PER_FILE)
                                rotateFile();
                            fw.write(line + "n");
                            bytesWritten += line.length() + 1;
                            Messages++;
                            Bytes += line.length() + 1;
                        }
                    }
                } catch (Exception e) {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
                System.out.println("Sleeping before reconnect...");
                try { Thread.sleep(15000); } catch (Exception e) { }
            }
        }
    }
    }

Answer

I tried to simulate the code and found that the error was very simple. You should use https instead of http in the url 🙂