ExcelTweets

ExcelTweets has created webpages that make use of certain resources from the Twitter API. These webpages can be called from Excel and the resulting output is processed and presented in Excel. ExcelTweets has selected Twitter resources that are most commonly used and seem the most appropriate for use in a spreadsheet environment. Based on needs and requests the list of resources will be expanded.

In the Excel sheets from ExcelTweets the resources are called with only 7 lines of VBA code, and they look like this:

Set xml = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")
xml.Open "GET", cRESOURCE, False
xml.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "content=text/html; charset=UTF-8"
xml.setRequestHeader "IF-Modified-Since", "Sat, 1 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT"
xml.Send
cRESULT = xml.responsetext
Set xml = Nothing

The variable cRESOURCE always consists of 3 parts:

• The url for Exceltweets: http://exceltweets.com
• parameters for user and personal Excelcode
• additional parameters based on the resource used

With these elements cRESOURCE could look like:

http;//exceltweets.com/gettweets?username=yourname&excelcode=yourcode&maxid=sometweetid&sinceid=sometweetid

Each response from a resource has a short header, before the values are returned, identified with an opening and a closing tag. These header values are:

• username: Twitter username
• excelcode: Excel code
• UTC: utc response time
• message: response message
• found: number of rows of return values

Subsequently all found return values are enclosed with the opening end closing tag "|et|".

The following ExcelTweets resources are currently available. Parameters may be optional or required.

Resource: gettweets

target (optional)	If this parameter is not used, tweets from the registered user will be retrieved. Any public Twitter account. or account that is followed by the registered user can be retrieved.
maxid (required)	Returns results with an ID less than (that is, older than) the specified ID. Fill in 0 to skip this parameter. Using maxid can be useful if you believe a request has failed and you want to try again, without requesting data you already have.
sinceid (required)	Returns results with an ID greater than (that is, more recent than) the specified ID. Fill in 0 to skip this parameter. Using sinceid is very useful to avoid retrieving old tweets again.
replies (optional)	If set to 1, this parameter will prevent replies from appearing in the returned result. If omitted or set to 0, replies will be retrieved.
retweets (optional)	If set to 0, native retweets will be removed from the returned result. If omitted or set to 1, native retweets will be retrieved.
Return values: 6, created,tweetid,replyscreenname,retweetcount,favoritecount,text

text	Twitter allows for tweets with a maximum of 140 characters. In cases with special characters proper URL encoding may be necessary. Twitter will shorten any links, and this will impact character count. If posting was unsuccesful an error message wil be shown. Check this Twitter page for special commands that need to be taken into account
replyid	If you are replying to a tweet and you know the ID of that tweet, you can fill it in here, so the tweet shows as a reply to.
Return value is included in the message header. A successful post wil include message=ok, time of tweet and the tweet ID. If post was not succesful message will be either an error message from exceltweets or from Twitter

slug (required)	You need to enter the slug of the Twitter list. This is the description of the Twitter list that also appears in the url when you check the list.
owner_screen_name (required)	The Twitter screen name of the account that created the Twitter list has to be entered. Both slug and owner screen name are required for results to be retrieved
cursor (optional)	Exceltweets retrieves up to 1,000 list members per API call. If a list has more members, you need to use the cursor to be able to retrieve more results. The value of the cursor is part of the response object.
Return values: 7, userid,username,name,crated,followers,following,tweets,favorites,lists,verified,protected,location,description,url,ava,banner

maxid	Returns results with an ID less than (that is, older than) the specified ID. Fill in 0 to skip this parameter. Using maxid can be useful if you believe a request has failed and you want to try again, without requesting data you already have.
sinceid	Returns results with an ID greater than (that is, more recent than) the specified ID. Fill in 0 to skip this parameter. Using sinceid is very useful to avoid dwonloading old tweets again.
Return values: 7, created,tweetid,username,name,retweetcount,favoritecount,text