-Tweeper is a web scraper which extracts the most recent public tweets of
-a given user from their home page on Twitter.com and formats them in RSS, so
-the information can be conveniently accessed and collected by a feed reader.
+Tweeper is a web scraper which can be used to conveniently follow the public
+activity of social network users without the need to log in or even be
+subscribed to the social network; tweeper converts the public information to
+RSS so that it can be accessed and collected by a feed reader.
-Since Jun 11th 2013 Twitter.com retired their API v1.0, so it's not possible
-to access a user timeline via RSS anymore, and it's also become mandatory to
-authenticate via OAuth to access this _public_ information in JSON format:
+Since Jun 11th 2013, when Twitter.com retired their API v1.0, it has not been
+possible anymore to access a user timeline via RSS, and it has also become
+mandatory to authenticate via OAuth to access this _public_ information in the
+JSON format:
https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/16289
https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/11564
http://twss.55uk.net/
http://twitter-rss.com/ (now redirecting to google.com)
+ http://rssitfor.me
However these solutions are still shady and let no control to the user about
who collects the information about the visited user timelines.
[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=TWEEPER&defid=3743173
+Tweeper can easily scrape sites other than Twitter, it is just a matter of
+writing an xsl stylesheet for the transformation; an example for pump.io
+activity stream is provided in rss_converter_pump.io.xsl
+
+The currently supported sites are:
+
+ * Twitter.com
+ * Pump.io based websites, like Identi.ca
+ * Dilbert.com
+ * Howtoons.com
+ * Instagram.com
+ * Facebook.com (public pages)
+
Tweeper can be used via web or as a command line program, for example as
-a filter in your feed reader, by passing the user's "screen name" (without the
-'@') as the first argument.
+a filter in your feed reader, by passing the URL of the user's public timeline
+as the first argument.
Example of use on the command line:
- $ php tweeper.php NSACareers
+ $ php tweeper.php http://twitter.com/NSACareers
Example of use as a Liferea[2] filter:
- $ liferea-add-feed "|php .../path_to_tweeper/tweeper.php NSAcareers"
+ $ liferea-add-feed "|php .../path_to_tweeper/tweeper.php http://twitter.com/NSAcareers"
+
+Example of use with identi.ca:
+
+ $ liferea-add-feed "|php .../path_to_tweeper/tweeper.php http://identi.ca/evan"
[2] http://lzone.de/liferea/