Command-line Twitter with Bash
$ tweet "The sun is out and I am going to make a sandwich. #montreal #food" <span class="graphicSubtext"><a href="http://twitter.com/solutious/status/2620100947">Some minutes ago</a> from web</span>
I found a gist the other day by defunkt with a bash function for posting to Twitter from the command-line. It’s a cute hack but it was insecure so I updated it to work securely over HTTPS.
Step 1: Update ~/.bashrc
# $ tweet "your message"
#
# See: http://solutious.com/blog/2009/07/13/bash-twitter/
#
# Contributors
# * @defunkt for the initial version
# * @anildigital and @grundprinzip for curl-fu
# * @solutious for the SSL sexytime
# See: http://curl.netmirror.org/docs/caextract.html
CERTS_URI=http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem
# SHA1 digest for file: Thu Mar 26 21:23:06 2009 UTC
# NOTE: This needs to be updated when cacert.pem is updated
CERTS_DIGEST=331b7e928bd758146ef4a17fee59a63e6ad6b10a
# Path to local copy of CA extract
CERTS_FILE=~/.cacerts.pem
function tweet {
verifycerts || return 1
if [ ! "$*" ]; then
echo 'Nothing to tweet!'
return 1
fi
curl --cacert $CERTS_FILE -n -d status="$*" https://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml > /dev/null 2>&1
echo "tweet'd '$*'"
}
# Download extract of CA certs from mozilla.org
function updatecerts {
curl $CERTS_URI > $CERTS_FILE 2> /dev/null
verifycerts
echo "Saved to $CERTS_FILE"
}
# Make sure the CA certs match the sha1 digest
function verifycerts {
if [ ! -f $CERTS_FILE ]; then
echo "$CERTS_FILE does not exist."
echo "Try running: updatecerts"
return 1
fi
openssl sha1 $CERTS_FILE | grep $CERTS_DIGEST > /dev/null
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
echo "Digest mismatch for $CERTS_FILE (maybe it was updated?)"
return 1
fi
return 0
}Step 2: Update ~/.netrc
Put your twitter credentials into ~/.netrc. This file is read by curl.
# put this in ~/.netrc
machine twitter.com
login USERNAME
password PASSWORD
Then update the file permissions so only you can read it:
$ chmod 600 ~/.netrc
Step 3: Update SSL certs
$ source ~/.bashrc
$ updatecerts
This downloads a copy of the Mozilla SSL certificate authority bundle to ~/.cacerts.pem. curl uses this file to verify the SSL certificate for http://twitter.com/
Step 4: Tweet!
$ tweet "Anything at all"
Errors
Digest mismatch for $CERTS_FILE (maybe it was updated?)
This probably means that the Mozilla SSL certificate authority bundle has been updated. First check that the date in the bundle is later than “Thu Mar 26 2009”. If it is, then you need to do the following:
- Download the latest copy of the bundle by running
updatecerts(ignore the error) - Update
CERTS_DIGESTin~/.bashrcwith the output from:openssl sha1 $CERTS_FILE
If the date has not changed, the ~/.cacerts.pem file has been modified. It may have been tampered with or corrupted. Delete it an run updatecerts again.
Contributors
If I missed anyone, please let me know!
