I have 0.0% experience with the Twitter API.
However, I was wondering, if it's possible, using this API or some other method, to have my Header or Background change everytime someone reloaded my Twitter page,
https://twitter.com/Otanan
My goal, or ideal method is someone just loads my Bio and it randomly selects an Image from a folder I have somewhere, or whatever
I don't think this is possible. The Twitter APIs, as they currently stand, seem to be designed for someone to change the page from a non-twitter application. Twitter won't let people run executable code in other people's browsers as it would open the gateway to huge numbers of viruses.
So, no, it isn't possible
Related
Over the past few weeks, I've spent some time researching about Instagram automation the goal being to have a program that can like and comment for me. I've come up with the following solutions:
Use a browser automation library like selenium to navigate through Instagram's website.
Cons: really botchy code that becomes useless as soon as Instagram renames their css classes which they do from time to time
Have a Android emulator running and automate that.
Cons: every instance of that emulator would require like 2 gigs of storage and would be really inefficient.
So how do for example apps on the play-/app store do it? They only have the small processing power of the phone available and still run effortless in the background.
Is there another solution that I'm missing?
The most efficient way to automate Instagram is to use the Instagram API. Using that API you can publish photos with users, tags and locations [1]. I don't find any immediate mention of Stories etc., but most likely if you work more with the API you find where/how to do that.
The also linked Instagram Platform API seems to be in a state of discontinuation.
As you tagged your question "Selenium", no, Selenium does not provide a reasonable approach for interfacing with Instagram as Selenium provides no way to make POST requests. You could try to automate the website through Selenium, but using the API is far more straightforward, less prone to layout changes and the officially sanctioned way.
[1] https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-api/content-publishing
The way I did it at the end was that I used the Instagram Private API for Instagram on GitHub:
https://github.com/ping/instagram_private_api
That way I didn't have to emulate an entire device actually browsing through Instagram.
I am aware of the update to Instagram apis. I have read through the documentation regarding fetching hashtag images. I'm confused regarding 2 points -
They have a section "Endpoints", which gives the url for fetching images using tags - https://api.instagram.com/v1/tags/{tag-name}?access_token=ACCESS-TOKEN
At the same time, when i try to submit for review (under Permissions Review section), in order to get access token, i get this message -
"This use case is not supported. We do not approve the public_content permission for one-off projects such as displaying hashtag based content on your website. As alternative solution, you can show your own Instagram content, or find a company that offers this type of service (content discover, moderation, and display)."
The 2nd point makes me believe that Instagram has stopped sharing hashtag images to apis, at the same time i can find a lot of widgets still fetching hashtag images. How do they do that? Can anyone point me in the right direction?
The 2nd point makes me believe that Instagram has stopped sharing hashtag images to apis,
Correct. Instagram has made business decision to block most developers from accessing this content.
at the same time i can find a lot of widgets still fetching hashtag images.
This doesn't tell you much. They might have gotten their app approved for other purposes. Also it appears that Instagram has made some exceptions for big apps (like Tinder). Life is not fair.
How do they do that? Can anyone point me in the right direction?
You probably cannot. 99% of the use cases are not allowed and so they will reject your app if you try to submit it. Read this short article about what you can and cannot do with the new Instagram API
The other widgets you are talking about probably have presented Instagram with one of the valid use cases to fetch the data. They are able to get only the public content. This new restriction is probably a business decision. If you would still want to get the data you are looking for, you shopuld possibly go to a third party data provider who sell such data
I'm currently trying to upload an image from my Mac application to Facebook. To do this, I'd like for the user to simply input his username and password, and to click a button.
The only issue is, Facebook doesn't actually have an API for the Mac, it only has one for iOS. This shouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that to login, you must use a web view, something I'm not to keen on doing, since I'd like the interface to be two simple text fields.
I've also looked into PHFacebook, a class I found online, but it also seems to utilize an NSWebView.
I'm wondering if there's a security issue when you use text fields; indeed, it's slightly strange no available API offers this function !
So, to conclude, is it possible, or is there an API, that lets you upload an image and lets you provide the user's credentials through simple NSStrings?
There's a Cocoa framework called MKAbeFook that lets you access Facebook APIs. I don't know if it's up to date, but you should give it a try.
It looks like this is not supported unless you can embed a web browser.
If you scroll to the bottom of: facebook authentication docs, it seems to say this.
Embedding a web browser is generally doable, but may be overkill for what you are trying to do.
Good luck!
You could do this through JSON on your mac app but I think the way Facebook protocols work you simply provide the image to upload and then the user logs into their Facebook account through a webview and has to authorize it.
I wrote a script that uses the Google Images JSON API to automatically fetch thumbnails for posts. I'm currently linking directly to the thumbnail (eg. http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTok4m3DWNRv8gxMDTE0bwj8m-jYl2UGdlbc7ig158m0XosD-lcQEIFcg). Does Google allow that?
If not, I should be allowed to download the thumbnails to my server right?
Its all about traffic. If your app will make tons of traffic, they can ban your server.
Anyway, better/best way is to ask them about this subject.
Also this might help you : Google Terms of Service Highlights
I see problems when you download the image thumbnail to your server and render. Images shown in search results might be copyrighted/inappropriate. They are crawled images so the owner can request google to remove at anytime. On contrary, if you cache them locally and render, I see the workflow is broken and you might be rendering image that ideally should have been revoked.
Coming back to hot linking, can you explain bit more on the actual usage context. What API you are using, what are you searching at, do you own the website / posts that you are filtering?
Also image search API is deprecated one. By terms it would be active only for three years since notice.
I am only just starting out with iPhone application development and have been doing some research with regards at getting data into an app using information available via the web.
I understand that I can access web pages using the NSURL* classes. Does anyone know how I might request data from a page that requires user input?
I can understand accessing an actual page, but I am not sure if (or how) I might be able to initiate the request and get the appropriate data back into my app.
Any help / pointers is very much appreciated.
EDIT_001:
I was thinking that I would have to interact with the actual controls on the page, but after a little more investigation I have found that I can simply use the request HTML that the page generates.
gary
This question is really too broad ("how does http networking work"), and if you look around this site you will probably find several questions that will take you in the right direction. As a first stop, check out the ASIHTTPRequest framework. Many people use it, and it makes http networking really simple.
You could also have a look at these links for inspiration:
http://iphoneonrails.com/
http://metaskills.net/2010/2/12/synchronizing-core-data-with-rails-3-0-0-pre