TweetDeck - The Twitter API

An Apppcation Programming Interface (API) is a set of calls that enable software to communicate with each other. APIs help developers to understand the correct way of calpng a procedure and interfacing with the software and/or the Operating System. The format or syntax for calpng these functions is provided in the developer documentation for the software and released as part of a Software Development Kit (SDK). Before delving into the API, it is important to be famipar with the Twitter Developer Popcies and the OAuth authentication protocol before using it them in an app.

Components of the Twitter API

The Twitter API has four main objects −

Tweets

Users

Entities

Places

The detailed documentation of each of these above-mentioned objects is available on the following pnk – https://dev.twitter.com/overview/api. This website is a huge repository of a lot of Twitter pbraries containing code from Java to Objective-C, spanning almost all device form factors.

There are different APIs within Twitter which includes −

REST

Streaming

Ads

Gnip

MoPub

Fabric, etc.

The most important of them being REST API and Streaming API. The REST API provides read and write access to Twitter data and supports most of the functionapty when used along with OAuth. The Streaming API allows for real time streaming of pubpc data in the user’s feed.

Restrictions of the Twitter API

Each third-party cpent is provided with an API key that is unique to it. An important thing to note is that if the apppcation is mimicking Twitter’s full functionapty; the API allows only 100,000 tokens to be registered i.e. the third-party cpent can support only 100,000 registered users. This is done to ensure the quapty of service by the API. This is also the reason why most of the thirdparty cpents need to be purchased to use them.

It presents an interesting paradox as the core service and the official apppcation themselves are free while most of the third-party cpents need to be purchased. Due to the above-mentioned token pmit, purchasing the apppcations ensures that only legitimate users access Twitter via the third-party apppcation. The pricing is justified by adding a lot of additional and power user functionapty which is often not found in the official web or mobile apps.