1BTI(1)                                bti                               BTI(1)
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NAME

6       bti - send a tweet to twitter.com from the command line
7

SYNOPSIS

9       bti [--account account] [--password password] [--action action]
10           [--user screenname] [--host HOST_NAME] [--proxy PROXY:PORT]
11           [--logfile LOGFILE] [--config CONFIGFILE] [--replyto ID]
12           [--retweet ID] [--page PAGENUMBER] [--bash] [--shrink-urls]
13           [--debug] [--dry-run] [--verbose] [--version] [--help]
14

DESCRIPTION

16       bti sends a tweet message to twitter.com.
17

OPTIONS

19       --account account
20           Specify the twitter.com account name.
21
22       --password password
23           Specify the password of your twitter.com account.
24
25       --action action
26           Specify the action which you want to perform. Valid options are
27           "update" to send a message, "friends" to see your friends timeline,
28           "public" to track public timeline, "replies" to see replies to your
29           messages, "user" to see a specific user's timeline and "direct" to
30           send a direct message to a friend. Default is "update".
31
32       --user screenname
33           Specify the user whose messages you want to see when the action is
34           "user", and the reciever of the direct message when the action is
35           "direct" (the sender must be following the receiver).
36
37       --host HOST_NAME
38           Specify the host which you want to send your message to. Valid
39           options are "twitter" to send to twitter.com.
40
41           If no host is specified, the default is to send to twitter.com.
42
43       --proxy PROXY:PORT
44           Specify a http proxy value. This is not a required option, and only
45           needed by systems that are behind a http proxy.
46
47           If --proxy is not specified but the environment variable
48           'http_proxy' is set the latter will be used.
49
50       --logfile LOGFILE
51           Specify a logfile for bti to write status messages to. LOGFILE is
52           in relation to the user's home directory, not an absolute path to a
53           file.
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55       --config CONFIGFILE
56           Specify a config file for bti to read from. By default, bti looks
57           in the ~/.bti file for config values. This default location can be
58           overridden by setting a specific file with this option.
59
60       --replyto ID
61           Status ID of a single post to which you want to create a threaded
62           reply to.
63
64           For twitter, this is ignored unless the message starts with the
65           @name of the owner of the post with the status ID.
66
67           For status.net, this can link any two messages into context with
68           each other. Status.net will also link a message that contains an
69           @name without this without regard to context.
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71       --retweet ID
72           Status ID of a single post which you want to retweet.
73
74       --shrink-urls
75           Scans the tweet text for valid URL patterns and passes each through
76           the supplied bti-shrink-urls script. The script will pass the URL
77           to a web service that shrinks the URLs, making it more suitable for
78           micro-blogging.
79
80           The following URL shrinking services are available: http://2tu.us/
81           (default) and http://bit.ly / http://j.mp
82
83           See the documentation for bti-shrink-urls for the configuration
84           options.
85
86       --debug
87           Print a whole bunch of debugging messages to stdout.
88
89       --page PAGENUMBER
90           When the action is to retrieve updates, it usually retrieves only
91           one page. If this option is used, the page number can be specified.
92
93       --dry-run
94           Performs all steps that would normally be done for a given action,
95           but will not connect to the service to post or retrieve data.
96
97       --verbose
98           Verbose mode. Print status IDs and timestamps.
99
100       --bash
101           Add the working directory and a '$' in the tweet message to help
102           specify it is coming from a command line. Don't put the working
103           directory and the '$' in the tweet message.
104
105           This option implies --background.
106
107       --background
108           Do not report back any errors that might have happened when sending
109           the message, and send it in the background, returning immediately,
110           allowing the user to continue on.
111
112       --version
113           Print version number.
114
115       --help
116           Print help text.
117

DESCRIPTION

119       bti provides an easy way to send tweet messages direct from the command
120       line or any script. It reads the message on standard input and uses the
121       account and password settings either from the command line options, or
122       from a config file, to send the message out.
123
124       Its primary focus is to allow you to log everything that you type into
125       a bash shell, in a crazy, "this is what I'm doing right now!" type of
126       way, letting the world follow along with you constant moving between
127       directories and refreshing your email queue to see if there's anything
128       interesting going on.
129
130       To hook bti up to your bash shell, export the following variable:
131
132       PROMPT_COMMAND='history 1 | sed -e "s/^\s*[0-9]*\s*//" | bti --bash'
133
134       This example assumes that you have the ~/.bti set up with your account
135       and password information already in it, otherwise you can specify them
136       as an option.
137

CONFIGURATION

139       The account and password can be stored in a configuration file in the
140       users home directory in a file named .bti. The structure of this file
141       is as follows:
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143       account
144           The twitter.com account name you wish to use to send this message
145           with.
146
147       password
148           The twitter.com password for the account you wish to use to send
149           this message with.
150
151       --action action
152           Specify the action which you want to perform. Valid options are
153           "update" to send a message, "friends" to see your friends timeline,
154           "public" to track public timeline, "replies" to see replies to your
155           messages and "user" to see a specific user's timeline.
156
157       --user screenname
158           Specify the user you want to see his/her messages while the action
159           is "user".
160
161       host
162           The host you want to use to send the message to. Valid options is
163           "twitter" or "custom" to specify your own server.
164
165       proxy
166           The http proxy needed to send data out to the Internet.
167
168       logfile
169           The logfile name for bti to write what happened to. This file is
170           relative to the user's home directory. If this file is not
171           specified here or on the command line, no logging will be written
172           to the disk.
173
174       replyto
175           The status ID to which all notices will be linked to.
176
177           There is no sane reason for a need to have this set in a config
178           file. One such reason is to have all your messages as children to a
179           particular status.
180
181       shrink-urls
182           Setting this variable to 'true' or 'yes' will enable the URL
183           shrinking feature. This is equivalent to using the --shrink-urls
184           option.
185
186       verbose
187           Setting this variable to 'true' or 'yes' will enable the verbose
188           mode.
189
190       There is an example config file called bti.example in the source tree
191       that shows the structure of the file if you need an example to work off
192       of.
193
194       Configuration options have the following priority:
195
196           command line option
197
198           config file option
199
200           environment variables
201
202       For example, command line options always override any config file
203       option, or any environment variables. Unless a config file is specified
204       by the command line. At that point, the new config file is read, and
205       any previous options set by a command line option, would be overridden.
206

AUTHOR

208       Written by Greg Kroah-Hartman <<greg@kroah.com>> and Amir Mohammad
209       Saied <<amirsaied@gmail.com>>.
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213bti                                May 2008                             BTI(1)
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