In some applications, it could be cool to have a feature that enabled the user to quickly get a glimpse of what people are saying on Twitter about the user or their product, service, company etc.

For instance, a service like GetSatisfaction.com has a feature just like that. They call it Overheard, and this is what it looks like:

There’s nothing like Twitter to give you feedback. I think MediaTemple felt the effect of unhappy customers on Twitter when their servers broke down, and stayed there for more than two days!

Anyway. I wanted to search from C#, and get back a DataTable. Here’s how it’s done:

    /// <summary>
    /// Searches Twitter for the specified query.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="query">The query.</param>
    /// <returns>Returns the search results as a DataTable</returns>
    public DataTable Search(string query)
    {
      DataTable dt = new DataTable();
      dt.Columns.Add("text");
      dt.Columns.Add("html");
      dt.Columns.Add("pubdate");
      dt.Columns.Add("id");
      dt.Columns.Add("link");
      dt.Columns.Add("authorname");
      dt.Columns.Add("authorlink");

      XDocument tweetResults = XDocument.Load(String.Format(

      "http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q={0}", HttpUtility.UrlEncode(query)));

      XNamespace atomNS = "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom";
      var q = from tweet in tweetResults.Descendants(atomNS + "entry")
              select new
              {
                Text = (string)tweet.Element(atomNS + "title"),
                Html = (string)tweet.Element(atomNS + "content"),
                DatePublished = DateTime.Parse((string)tweet.Element(atomNS + "published")),
                Id = (string)tweet.Element(atomNS + "id"),
                Link = (string)tweet.Elements(atomNS + "link")
                .Where(link => (string)link.Attribute("rel") == "alternate")
                .Select(link => (string)link.Attribute("href"))
                .First(),
                Author = (from author in tweet.Descendants(atomNS + "author")
                          select new
                          {
                            Name = (string)author.Element(atomNS + "name"),
                            Uri = (string)author.Element(atomNS + "uri"),
                          }).First()
              };

      foreach (var item in q)
      {
        dt.Rows.Add(item.Text, item.Html, item.DatePublished, item.Id, item.Link,

                    item.Author.Name, item.Author.Uri);
      }

      return dt;
    }

Sometimes, it would be great to be able to translate a text from e.g. English to Danish directly from C#. This could be useful when you want to translate a Resource file into another language.

Google Translate is awesome. There’s also Windows Live Translator, but Microsoft are far behind Google (also) in this game.

Code:

using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Text;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

namespace Utilities
{
  public static class Translator
  {
    /// <summary>
    /// Translates the text.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="input">The input.</param>
    /// <param name="languagePair">The language pair.</param>
    /// <returns></returns>
    public static string TranslateText(string input, string languagePair)
    {
      return TranslateText(input, languagePair, System.Text.Encoding.UTF7);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Translate Text using Google Translate
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="input">The string you want translated</param>
    /// <param name="languagePair">2 letter Language Pair, delimited by "|". 
    /// e.g. "en|da" language pair means to translate from English to Danish</param>
    /// <param name="encoding">The encoding.</param>
    /// <returns>Translated to String</returns>
    public static string TranslateText(string input, string languagePair, Encoding encoding)
    {
      string url = String.Format("http://www.google.com/translate_t?hl=en&ie=UTF8&text={0}&langpair={1}", input, languagePair);

      string result = String.Empty;

      using (WebClient webClient = new WebClient())
      {
        webClient.Encoding = encoding;
        result = webClient.DownloadString(url);
      }

      Match m = Regex.Match(result, "(?<=<div id=result_box dir=\"ltr\">)(.*?)(?=</div>)");

      if (m.Success)
        result = m.Value;

      return result;
    }
  }
}

The translated string is fetched by the RegEx close to the bottom. This could of course change, and you have to keep it up to date.

I’ve spent some time lately, playing around with the Twitter API. And along with that belongs the TwitPic’s API. I’m using Twitter a lot, to stay in touch with tech news, other developers and just for fun. But it’s getting more and more used for a lot of different things, and I needed it to integrate with an E-commerce platform I’m developing.

The code for post a picture to TwitPic looks like this:

    /// <summary>
    /// URL for the TwitPic API's upload method
    /// </summary>
    private const string TWITPIC_UPLADO_API_URL = "http://twitpic.com/api/upload";

    /// <summary>
    /// URL for the TwitPic API's upload and post method
    /// </summary>
    private const string TWITPIC_UPLOAD_AND_POST_API_URL = "http://twitpic.com/api/uploadAndPost";

    /// <summary>
    /// Uploads the photo and sends a new Tweet
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="binaryImageData">The binary image data.</param>
    /// <param name="tweetMessage">The tweet message.</param>
    /// <param name="filename">The filename.</param>
    /// <returns>Return true, if the operation was succeded.</returns>
    public bool UploadPhoto(byte[] binaryImageData, string tweetMessage, string filename)
    {
      // Documentation: http://www.twitpic.com/api.do
      string boundary = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
      string requestUrl = String.IsNullOrEmpty(tweetMessage) ? TWITPIC_UPLADO_API_URL : TWITPIC_UPLOAD_AND_POST_API_URL;
      HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(requestUrl);
      string encoding = "iso-8859-1";

      request.PreAuthenticate = true;
      request.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = true;
      request.ContentType = string.Format("multipart/form-data; boundary={0}", boundary);
      request.Method = "POST";

      string header = string.Format("--{0}", boundary);
      string footer = string.Format("--{0}--", boundary);

      StringBuilder contents = new StringBuilder();
      contents.AppendLine(header);

      string fileContentType = GetImageContentType(filename);
      string fileHeader = String.Format("Content-Disposition: file; name=\"{0}\"; filename=\"{1}\"", "media", filename);
      string fileData = Encoding.GetEncoding(encoding).GetString(binaryImageData);

      contents.AppendLine(fileHeader);
      contents.AppendLine(String.Format("Content-Type: {0}", fileContentType));
      contents.AppendLine();
      contents.AppendLine(fileData);

      contents.AppendLine(header);
      contents.AppendLine(String.Format("Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"{0}\"", "username"));
      contents.AppendLine();
      contents.AppendLine(this.Username);

      contents.AppendLine(header);
      contents.AppendLine(String.Format("Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"{0}\"", "password"));
      contents.AppendLine();
      contents.AppendLine(this.Password.ToInsecureString());

      if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(tweetMessage))
      {
        contents.AppendLine(header);
        contents.AppendLine(String.Format("Content-Disposition: form-data; name=\"{0}\"", "message"));
        contents.AppendLine();
        contents.AppendLine(tweetMessage);
      }

      contents.AppendLine(footer);

      byte[] bytes = Encoding.GetEncoding(encoding).GetBytes(contents.ToString());
      request.ContentLength = bytes.Length;

      using (Stream requestStream = request.GetRequestStream())
      {
        requestStream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);

        using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
        {
          using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
          {
            string result = reader.ReadToEnd();

            XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(result);

            XElement rsp = doc.Element("rsp");
            string status = rsp.Attribute(XName.Get("status")) != null ? rsp.Attribute(XName.Get("status")).Value : rsp.Attribute(XName.Get("stat")).Value;

            return status.ToUpperInvariant().Equals("OK");
          }
        }
      }
    }