For Twitter , how to create test user accounts? - testing

Facebook allows you to create test user accounts that can only be used for testing purpose.
Does Twitter provide similar functionality ? I don't want to get my application blacklisted for creating fake user accounts; do I have to use my real user account for testing my application ? What strategies are your using for testing application with Twitter ?

As far as I know, there is nothing in Twitter's rules against creating account (unlike Facebook, where with the exception of test accounts, you're not allowed to create multiple accounts for testing purposes). So, you can just register the account like you normally would.
You might want to take a look at this post for some other tips for test accounts (hiding your tweets, deleting the account when you're done testing, etc.).

I'm currently creating a Twitter application and here are some of the strategies I'm using.
I create my accounts in combination with Gmail addresses. If I create a gmail account as user bob#gmail.com , I secure the Twitter name #bob on Twitter. That way it's kind of hard to forget where to email a lost password. I don't go crazy, as I don't need 100's of test accounts but I do have up to three.
I log on to my test accounts using Chrome because it will automatically recall your password as soon as you type in your Twitter name on the home page. That way it is easy to switch between them, but note that I find it hard sometimes to know which account is actually active because I'm constantly looking at other profiles. This gets confusing if I don't constantly look at the logged in user icon indicator.
Never, ever re-tweet anything unless you absolutely have to for a test case or use hash-tags unless for a test case. Unbelievably even on a completely un-publicized account, I had a few surprise Twitter users in my DB a few seconds after I re-tweeted a link.
on Localhost, close all your other browser windows while your testing. Especially if your calling the API through AJAX. You never know which sites you have open whom also call the Twitter API through AJAX, and this can seriously screw with your tests and rate limits. Especially when your developing live.
I would not recommend protecting your tweets. It's too limiting for most use cases.
For my site, I need to place a link in the tweets. Twitter will not
allow live links to http://localhost so you have to plan around
this and have a live test server sooner then you may anticipate.

Twitter has one of the easiest registration processes I have seen. You can quite easily create several test accounts; this is the only method I have used.
Here is a blog post about it.

Related

Is it possible to identify the person talking to the google assistant by voice?

Recently google has added multiple user support to the assistant so how would use the API to identify the person by voice?
It depends what you mean by "identify the person".
There is no way for an Action to get the raw audio, so there is no way for it to do voice printing or anything along those lines.
Although each voice has to be reported against a Google User ID, you do not have direct access to that user ID.
What developers do have access to is a UID that is sent along with each request to your fulfillment server. This UID is consistent across requests, although it can be reset by a user (for example, if they reset their Google Home). You can think of this the same way you think of an HTTP cookie - you can track the UID and, if you see it again, have reasonable assurance it is the same user that accessed it last time. This breaks down, however, for the "default" account on Google Home, since anybody who doesn't have an account will map to this user.
Beyond this, you can also use Account Linking to connect a Google Account consistently to an account in your own system. If you have sufficient authentication in place, or are using one from Google or Facebook for example, this can act as an identity.
There isn't an API for developers to identify users by voice.

Instagram Sandbox Invites page redirects to the developer register page

I have an app in sandbox mode and I have a sandbox user that is pending. (It has also been at least a day since the user was added). The user can successfully use my app and has given authorization; however, the user's likes returns an empty response (I know they can only access liked media from other authorized sandbox users, but the user has liked media from my account that is set as the admin). The Instagram API documentation states that the user may go to their developer site and accept/decline sandbox invites from the Sandbox Invites tab except my user is shown the developer register page instead. Does anyone know what is going on/how to fix this?
Instagram made sweeping changes to it's API and the way it is accessed recently. As a result of the lockdown the Sandbox Invite process is glitchy at best. I myself just ran into this issue of invites not showing up.
It seems, for the moment, the only way to access the invite is to fill out the developer form(I just used a http://localhost:8000 URL and a random phone number that is not likely to exist, although try without one as it might not be necessary). That should automatically forward you to the invite page where the invited user can then accept or decline a Sandbox Invite.
It's a bit of a mess and the lack of documentation / indication to indicate that this step is mandatory doesn't help matters. Hope this helps save some time and headaches!

Google Tasks API authorization

I can see many related questions on SO, but none that answers exactly what I'm confused with.
I'm using Google Calendar API in a .NET desktop application that allows user to provide his/her username/password, logs in on his behalf and adds some events to the calendar. Now I want to do exactly the same thing for Tasks feature. I'm trying to use Google Tasks API for this, but have been told that I need to do some OAuth kind of authentication, and even before that, I need to go to my gmail account and set permissions and get my project "key" to enable it.
Now does every user of my application need to do these steps in their Gmail account? Or do I need to do this in MY gmail account once and then my application code will be able to use the generated project "key" to enable my users to add tasks to THEIR gmail tasks list?
Figured it out. For anyone having a hard time understanding this, here it is:
The "key" generation step needs to be done only once per application, not for each user who's going to use your application. To generate a key, login to your Google Account and go to Google APIs Console page. Click API Access button and that's where you can generate keys for different kinds of applications like browser apps, desktop apps, Android apps etc. After registration, you'll need to take Client ID, Client secret and API key from this page and put them into the code. Sample code (.NET) for task creation and several other Google features is available here.
Once your user runs your application, he'll be taken to his Google account in his default browser where he'll be asked if he wants to allow this application to write to his calendar/tasks list. This page will display your logo and description text too that you can provide at registration time. Once allowed, this step won't be required again in the next one hour (this may be adjustable, i don't know yet).

How to test Google Plus API (Google Plus test account)?

I am pretty sure I missed something, but I couldn't find (ie. google) a possibility to create test accounts for Google Plus.
However, it is surely not allowed to create fake user account for tests, so, how do I test my G+ apps with more than one (my) account?
As you point out, your Google+ account should be created using your common name, but you are not limited to one profile. For manual testing you can create a second profile.
If you are doing automated testing, though, this is probably not an effective approach. Your tests will consume your quota so whenever possible mock the client library to test your code.

Account Strategies on New Social Enabled Sites

So I'm in the midst of creating a Facebook Connect enabled site. The site in question will leverage your social graph - as defined by your facebook account - to do social things (what is really not important here). Here's the big question I have:
Are people still rolling their own authentication heuristic when using something like Facebook Connect? That is, are newer (FBConnect) sites today providing only FBConnect as an authentication strategy, or are they pairing it with other auth strategies (such as Google Auth, Open ID, etc)? What do you think is the best way to go? With Facebook having over 300,000,000 users now, is having 1 authentication strategy (FBConnect) enough? Or is it proper netiquette to provide users other means?
Some of the references I have been looking at today:
http://www.kenburbary.com/2009/08/five-reasons-companies-should-be-integrating-social-media-with-facebook-connect/
Increased Registration - Data from Facebook states that sites that use Facebook Conect as an alternate to account registration have seen a 30-300% increase in registration on their sites.
• Citysearch.com – Daily site registrations have tripled in the 4 months since Facebook Connect testing began
• Huffingtonpost.com – Since integrating with Facebook Connect, more than 33% of their new commentor registrations come through Facebook
• Cbsinsider.com – Over 85% of all new user registrations are coming from Facebook Connect
http://www.simtechnologies.net/facebook-connect-integration.php
"according to the current statistics using facebook connect increases 30-40% user traffic as compared to non-facebook connect websites."
http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Connect/Authentication_and_Authorization
Our research has shown that sites that implement Facebook Connect see user registration rates increase by 30 - 200%.
No Need to Create Separate Accounts
In general, it's not a good practice to force a new user to create a separate account when registering on your site with Facebook Connect. You'll have the user's Facebook account information, and can create a unique identifier on your system for that user.
Just make sure you understand what Facebook user data you can store, or simply cache for 24 hours. See Storable Information for details.
If the user ever deactivates his or her Facebook account, you have a chance to contact the user to request the user create a new account on your site. When a user deactivates his or her account, we ping your account reclamation URL to notify you of the deactivation. Then Facebook sends the user an email regarding the deactivation. If the user has connected accounts with any Facebook Connect sites, and if your site has specified an account reclamation URL, the email will contain a section with your application logo, name, and reclamation link, in addition to an explanation about the link's purpose. For more information, see Reclaiming Accounts.
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/how-facebook-connect-points-the-way-towards-velvet-rope-networks/
The Drawbacks
Though there are advantages to using Facebook Connect for integration, there are some drawbacks, mostly from the marketer’s point of view. If you build out a social network project using Facebook Connect, Facebook gets all the information and you get none. You don’t get a database of users. You don’t get a way to message people participating in your event, except for “in stream,” the way everyone else is using the app. You don’t have any sense of demographics, nor any control abilities to block trolls or other unwanted types.
Crystal Beasley "All of the FB Connect sites we have built so far have incorporated "standard" accounts as well, even with the added complexity of supporting dual login methods."
There are still people who use mySpace (myself not included), and I know a several people coming out of college that have completely deleted their FB accounts to get rid of information of them they don't want potential employers to find (I know, there are a lot easier ways of doing this). If there are people who for whatever reason do not want to have a FB account, at least give them the option of creating a private google account.
Using ONLY Facebook as the register/login-method seems pretty dangerous to me. If you had a regular user management system, with Facebook Connect to speed up the process from a user-perspective is a good idea.
The Problem is somewhere else
if you really want to leverage the social graph only facebook brings "pure" data
the graphs people build at e.g. myspace arent telling much about that person and its social env. - at google neither
if you are just heading for viral spreading prefer the plattforms that share the best (just facebook again)