A Windows Phone Twitter Application : Part 2 of 2

(Update : For trying out code posted on this blog post, Kindly use the official/ locked emulator . The unlocked emulator images have a known issue with HTTPS )

This is the second post in the series of posts explaining how you can build your own twitter application on Windows Phone 7

Post(s) in this series:

Part 1: Understanding oAuth

As explained in part one, the hard part of writing a twitter application is, to figure out/ understand the authentication/ authorization mechanism. Once You have done that, you can pretty much write an app for any service that has oauth as its authentication/authorization mechanism.

Now that we have obtained all the necessary authorization token(s), we can now access the protected resources on the user’s behalf.

How to Post a Tweet on a User’s behalf?

Using the access token and our app’s consumer secret , we need to make a POST request to twitter’s API to post a tweet from our app.

Using Hammock’s REST Library, You would do something like this :

if (txtBoxNewTweet.Text.Trim().Length == 0) { return; }
var credentials = new OAuthCredentials
{
      Type = OAuthType.ProtectedResource,
       SignatureMethod = OAuthSignatureMethod.HmacSha1,
       ParameterHandling = OAuthParameterHandling.HttpAuthorizationHeader,
       ConsumerKey = TwitterSettings.consumerKey,
       ConsumerSecret = TwitterSettings.consumerKeySecret,
       Token = this.accessToken,
       TokenSecret = this.accessTokenSecret,
       Version = "1.0"
};

var restClient = new RestClient
{
        Authority = TwitterSettings.StatusUpdateUrl,
        HasElevatedPermissions = true,
        Credentials = credentials,
        Method = WebMethod.Post
};

restClient.AddHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");

// Create a Rest Request and fire it
var restRequest = new RestRequest
{
       Path = "1/statuses/update.xml?status=" + txtBoxNewTweet.Text
};

var ByteData = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(txtBoxNewTweet.Text);
restRequest.AddPostContent(ByteData);
restClient.BeginRequest(restRequest, new RestCallback(PostTweetRequestCallback));

Now that you are able to make posts, you need a way to see the posts you have made on the user’s twitter account!

Well For looking at status updates, you don’t need authorization. You can directly give a call to the twitter api and you will get your status updates. ( This sample code is as demonstrated on Scott Gu’s blog )

private void GetUserTimeLine()
       {
           WebClient wcTwitterTimeline = new WebClient();
           wcTwitterTimeline.DownloadStringCompleted += new DownloadStringCompletedEventHandler(wcTwitterTimeline_DownloadStringCompleted);
           wcTwitterTimeline.DownloadStringAsync(new System.Uri("http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/public_timeline.xml?screen_name=" + userScreenName));
       }

       void wcTwitterTimeline_DownloadStringCompleted(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs e)
       {
           if (e.Error != null)
           { return; }
           XElement Tweets = XElement.Parse(e.Result);
           listboxMyTimeline.ItemsSource = from tweet in Tweets.Descendants("status")
                                           select new TwitterItem
                                           {
                                               UserName = tweet.Element("user").Element("screen_name").Value,
                                               Tweet = tweet.Element("text").Value,
                                               ImageSource = tweet.Element("user").Element("profile_image_url").Value
                                           };
           Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() =>
           {
               listboxMyTimeline.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
               txtBoxNewTweet.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
               btnPostTweet.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
           });
       }

With this, you are pretty much able to make a basic twitter app, that allows you to post tweets.

Using the Twitter api (Found here) You can create a full fledged twitter app.

As promised, I am uploading the source code for the app. You can download the source here.

(UPDATE : I have updated the code snippet, so that the app now runs on the public beta of the tools , Thanks Don for pointing this out )

Once again, Thanks for your support. With the final SDK Bits coming out this September 16th and with WP7 hitting the RTM status (Congratulations to the Windows Phone team @MSFT, Will be  queuing up the store when, it hits retail ), The next couple of weeks seem to be really really interesting.  Stay tuned for more exciting WP7 stuff.