This is how I set up a twitter feed API endpoint in NodeJS with NGINX, Ruby and T etc. This can be used to integrate SEO or automate Twitter post analytics or automate posts to twitter.

This guide assumes you have an Ubuntu server, nodejs (nginx) and setup ruby, rails and t twitter command line utility setup.  Also, you will need to have an API setup and working

Ensure your API is configured in NGINX /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

server {
...
	location /api/appname/v1 {
		#rewrite ^/api(.*) /$1 break;
		proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;	
		# proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
		proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
		proxy_http_version  1.1;
		proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
		proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;
		proxy_set_header Proxy "";
		proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
		root /code/nodejs/appname;
		proxy_pass http://appnmaeapi;
	}
	...
}

I set up a placeholder GET routine in my node process that we will be used to communicate with the Twitter command line utility.

app.get('/api/appname/v1/feed/twitter/',function(req,res){
	var data = { "Feed":"" };
	data["Feed"] = "Working v0.1";
	res.json(data);
});

I started 1 instance of the API on a server with pm2 linked to https://keymetrics.io/.

sudo pm2 start /noejs/app01/app.js -i 1 --name "appname"

View API Status with PM2

sudo pm2 status
● Agent Online | Dashboard Access: https://app.keymetrics.io/#/r/######### | Server name:appname-######
┌────────────┬────┬─────────┬──────┬────────┬─────────┬────────┬─────┬───────────┬──────┬──────────┐
│ App name   │ id │ mode    │ pid  │ status │ restart │ uptime │ cpu │ mem       │ user │ watching │
├────────────┼────┼─────────┼──────┼────────┼─────────┼────────┼─────┼───────────┼──────┼──────────┤
│appname │ 0  │ cluster │ 5480 │ online │ 0       │ 87s    │ 0%  │ 35.1 MB   │ apiuser │ disabled │

You can restart the API manually with PM2 by typing

sudo pm2 restart "appname"

I like to use https://paw.cloud/ software to test API’s over say Postman, I can easily see the test placeholder API is working.

The browser works for now but as soon as I add authentication the browser will fail, Paw FTW.

A simple way to authenticate the API is for the caller to pass a known token when requesting the page via an HTTP POST packet.

app.post('/api/appname/v1/feed/twitter/',function(req,res){
	var data = { "Status":"" };
	var wwxapi = req.headers['x-access-token'];
	var data = { "Feed":"" };
	var errData = "";
	if (wwxapi == undefined) {
		console.log(" 499 token required");
		errData = {"Status": "499", "Error": "valid token required"};
		res.statusCode = 499;
		res.send(errData);
		res.end();
	} else {
		var xpikeypass = false;
		// Check the API Key against known API Keys
		if (wwxapi == "appname-##############################") { xpikeypass = true;} // Debug API Key
		if (xpikeypass == true) {
			//  app request validated

			data["Feed"] = "Twitter Feed API Working v0.2";
			res.json(data);

		} else {
			console.log("499 token required");
			errData = {"Status": "499", "Error": "valid token required"};
			res.statusCode = 409;
			res.send(errData);	
			res.end();
		}
	}
});

Don’t forget to restart the API after changes

sudo pm2 restart "appname"

Now we can change the API endpoint to a POST (instead of GET) and paste the code above and test it.  If we pass an invalid “x-access-token” value the API will return error 409 as designed.

Passing the right “x-access-token” will return data (200 OK).

Now we can link the Twitter command line utility with the NodeJS API.

app.post('/api/appname/v1/feed/twitter/',function(req,res){
	var data = { "Status":"" };
	var wwxapi = req.headers['x-access-token'];
	var data = { "Feed":"" };
	var errData = "";
	if (wwxapi == undefined) {
		console.log(" 499 token required");
		errData = {"Status": "499", "Error": "valid token required"};
		res.statusCode = 499;
		res.send(errData);
		res.end();
	} else {
		var xpikeypass = false;
		// Check the API Key against known API Keys
		if (wwxapi == "appname-##############################") { xpikeypass = true;} // Debug API Key
		if (xpikeypass == true) {
			//  app request validated

			var result = require('child_process').execSync('/theuserwithrubyinstalled/.rbenv/shims/t search all "lang:en nodejs" --csv').toString();
			data["Feed"] = result;

			res.json(data);

		} else {
			console.log("499 token required");
			errData = {"Status": "499", "Error": "valid token required"};
			res.statusCode = 409;
			res.send(errData);	
			res.end();
		}
	}
});

Now we can test the NodeJS API and have is spawn a subprocess and hit Twitter. In this case, we are finding the latest posts on Twitter with NodeJS in them.

Works a treat 🙂

Up next 

• Schedule getting data from the Twitter command line utility in crontab and save to Redis
• Process the CSV and save new Twitter changes to Redis
• Query Redis and send returned data back to the API.
• Change the API to read from Redis in NodeJ.S
• Secure.

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