4 Fly, My Pretties, Fly

A well-designed software API is like an ATM: convenient, efficient, and secure. For like an automated teller machine, a good API (application program interface) is an around-the-clock source of goodies to those who present the right inputs. APIs, like ATMs, allow their users to access a host of services that were once the sole preserve of human operators, such as, in the case of banks, paying a bill, requesting a checkbook, obtaining a balance, or moving funds between accounts. But ATMs, like banks, do not operate on the honor principle. Rather, they require users to first obtain a valid account and present valid credentials whenever they seek access to sensitive services. A secure API also requires its users to first register for a named or numbered account and offer appropriate tokens of proof—the API version of a pin code—before they can access the goodies. When it comes to registering Twitterbots, which, it must be said, are autonomous systems with great potential for mischief, Twitter is no look-the-other-way Swiss bank. So in this chapter, we walk through the necessary steps to set up a Twitter account and register a new application. It may seem a touch ironic that our bots need the permission and support of the Twitter API to play their subversive games online.
1
But once this necessary bureaucracy is quickly dealt with, we can move on to the altogether more interesting topic of how best to exploit the API, first by building a reusable launch platform for sending our bots into the Twittersphere and then by designing our own free-flying Twitterbots.