This version of SnapTwitter is no longer actively maintained. It has been replaced by a completely reprogrammed version: https://github.com/AGrillenberger/SnapTwitter2
SnapTwitter is an extension for the Snap! programming environment (snap.berkeley.edu).
If you want to use this tool in school, feel free to contact me at [email protected] for further information. I am very interested in your feedback on this tool and how you use it in school. Hence, I would appreciate if you contact me and answer me some questions on how you use it.
- Java runtime installed
- internet connection
- Twitter account as this is required for accessing the Twitter API
SnapTwitter can be downloaded at http://inf.fu-berlin.de/~grillenb/SnapTwitter-current.zip
- Start SnapTwitter by double clicking on
SnapTwitter.jaror by using the commandjava -jar SnapTwitter.jarin the Windows command line or Linux/MacOS terminal. - Snap! should load automatically in your default browser with the SnapTwitter blocks preloaded. If this is not the case, start it using http://snap.berkeley.edu/snapsource/snap.html#open:http://localhost:13337/getBlockXML
- Check if the SnapTwitter blocks were loaded: e.g. there should be a "twitter: prepare" block in the control section
If Snap cannot be started, often using the SnapTwitterNoHTTPS version in step 1 helps.
SnapTwitter can be used offline when a tweet cache was created. To create such a cache, start SnapTwitter with the parameter --createCache (java -jar SnapTwitter.jar --createCache). Every tweet arriving at the tool will be serialized and stored in a TweetCache file. Hence, after starting SnapTwitter in online mode, you need to start Snap, use the prepare block to authenticate with twitter and connect to the stream with the respective block. When the tweets received counter in SnapTwitter is high enough, you can quit SnapTwitter, then the cache is being written to the file tweetCache.serin the SnapTwitter folder. Afterwards, using SnapTwitter in offline mode is possible without additional steps.
The following images show a small example program using the SnapTwitter blocks. First, after pressing the key p, it establishes a connection to Twitter and initiates the authentication mechanisms (twitter: prepare). After pressing space, it connects to the twitter stream (twitter: connect to stream), initializes a map view (twitter: stamp map image) and then processes all received tweets usijng the twitter: for each tweet. All these tweets are visualized on the map using the twitter: show tweet ___ on map block, until the key s is being pressed and the program disconnects from the twitter stream (twitter: disconnect from stream)
An example working sheet (in German) and an example program can be found in the "material" folder.
Feel free to contact me with questions and ideas concerning SnapTwitter or data management in schools in general:
Andreas Grillenberger
Computing Education Research Group
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
[email protected]