hummingbird

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This application is no longer supported by Chapman University. If you are a Chapman developer, please see the Inside Streaming application.

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Stupidly simple social media streaming for Node.js

Hummingbird is an independent node.js application that makes connecting to/managing real-time social media interactions simple. Real-time updates are processed by hummingbird and then placed into a Redis queue for whatever you want to do with them.

This README is only going to cover the basics for now, as the project is going through a bit of a refactor into new module.

Documentation is ongoing and incomplete, but you can get details in the wiki.

Supported Services

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Wordpress

Using Hummingbird

Hummingbird is manipulated strictly through a REST api, and each interaction must be defined by the service requesting a modification.

• Accounts
  • Create
  • Destroy
• Keywords
  • Create
  • Destroy
• Posts
  • Example
• Deployment

Accounts

Accounts for social media can be tracked my making REST calls to the /accounts endpoint. Supported by twitter, facebook, instagram

Create

POST /accounts

• service=twitter - (REQUIRED)
• service_id=123456789 - (REQUIRED) Must be the numerical ID of the twitter account
• auth_token=sdfsdfsdf - (facebook, instagram) Must be obtained by the oauth process of those services.

Destroy

DELETE /accounts

• service=twitter - (REQUIRED)
• service_id=123456789 - (REQUIRED) Must be the numerical ID of the twitter account

Keywords

Keywords are equivalent to hashtags without the hashtag, just the raw content. Supported by twitter, facebook, instagram.

Create

POST /keywords

• service=twitter - (REQUIRED)
• phrase=my keyword - (REQUIRED) The phrase to track. Be sure to omit the "#" symbol.

Destroy

DELETE /keywords

• service=twitter - (REQUIRED)
• phrase=my keyword - (REQUIRED) The phrase to track. Be sure to omit the "#" symbol.

Posts

When a real-time update is received, Hummingbird generates a post and stores it on your Redis queue.

Hummingbird posts normalize the updates into a single, consistent JSON format, regardless of the service it came from. Complete documentation on the structure of a post is available in the wiki.

Example Post

{
  service:      'twitter',
  service_id:   '123456790',                                      // string, id of tweet
  timestamp:    '2014-03-19T10:08:00.070Z',                       // string, ISO 8601 timestamp of tweet
  text:         'text @mention #keyword text',                    // string, tweet text content
  external_uri: 'http://service.com/service_id/status/123456790', // string, twitter tweet url
  
  author: {
    service:      'twitter',
    service_id:   '1234567890',                    // string, id of tweet author
    user_name:    'cool_dude23',                   // string, tweet author username
    display_name: 'Mr. Cool Dude',                 // string, tweet author formal name
    description:  'I am a cool dude.',             // string, tweet author description
    avatar:       'http://service.com/1234567.jpg' // string, url to twitter user thumbnail
  },
  
  mentions: [
    {
      service:      'twitter',
      service_id:   '1234567',      // string, id of mentioned account
      user_name:    'cool_dude23',  // string, the username of mentioned account
      display_name: 'Mr. Cool Dude' // string, the formal name of the mentioned account
    }
  ],
  
  keywords: [
    {
      phrase: 'chapmanu' // string, without #, of hashtags in tweet
    }
  ],
  
  urls: [
    {
      domain:         'google.com',             // string, the specific domain of the expanded URL
      link:           'http://google.com/news', // string, the full expanded url
      shortened_link: 'http://g.co/news'        // string, shortened link in tweet text
    }
  ],
  
  photos: [
    {
      image: 'http://service.com/some/cool/image/12345.jpg' // The raw url to the largest image in tweet
    }
  ],
  
  source: {
    service:      'twitter',
    name:         'Twitter',
    description:  'Social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface.',
    domain:       'twitter.com',
    external_uri: 'https://twitter.com/'
  }
}

Deployment

In order to run, hummingbird requires:

• node.js 0.10.x
• Redis 2.8.x

To deploy (assuming node.js is installed):

1. git clone [email protected]:chapmanu/hummingbird.git
2. Edit config.js and set the necessary API credentials and server information. You can edit environment-specific credentials in the various environment files. Settings in environment config files will override config.js when that environment is specified on run.
3. Run node app.js and then go get yourself a beer!